Friends from afar sent me not one but seven jars of assorted gelatinous delights for the holidays. Each homemade delectable is tastefully adorned with an elegant custom label and a short background regarding the origin of the harvested contents. Perfect.
I can barely wait to taste them all. But await I will.
The Assortment Include
Grape Jam · Wild Plum Jam · Apricot Peach Jam · Banana Butter
Chokecherry Jam · Black Raspberry Jam · Voodoogoo Jam
This spring I broadcast a Tweet expressing my unmitigated joy over a delectable dish of fish - sea bass to be exact. Moved to the point of illustration, I added a hieroglyph depicting my meal - a fish graphic fashioned from alphanumeric characters:
Paul Tweeted a hint that he might add the typographic fish to the ShirtPizza product line. When he did so, he sent me a sample tee. The above video clip captures the Brainstorm “unboxing” of the unexpected gift.
A Takeaway
One-to-one relational marketing concepts are still a wise play for today’s brand marketers, but fortify them with WOM (word of mouth), Search, feeds, and a voice in the online community to bring one-to-many reach to what was once a private exchange.
In developing and launching a community-inspired product, ShirtPizza broadened not only their product line and their reach, but their customer base as well. We’ve been fishing around the ShirtPizza site, now maybe you will, too.
A recent visit to the deli counter at Target yielded an interesting consumer experience brand extension. It’s a small detail, yet answers a very basic quandary.
Ever leave a deli or carry out without a utensil with which to eat? Enter this little innovation.
Forget Finger Food
The lid of the food container has a small thermoformed cavity that’s roughly the shape of the head of a spoon. In this cavity is a “folded” spoon with a living hinge and a snap-fit tab that transforms it into a fully functional utensil roughly 2/3 the length of a normal plasticware spoon.
Putting a Finger on Innovation
A need was identified and with some simple ingenuity a smart solution was borne. While it won’t change the world, it is genius.
With this week’s Sirius-XM merger approval, we take a nostalgic look back at our XM packaging experience.
About the Project
Packaging is a part of modern life. This article, an insight into the design of a consumer package for satellite radio provider XM, includes many aspects of a typical package development process. In the interest of time, we’ll skip research, diagnostic and technical methodology phases and concentrate on the basic iterative process steps in this article.
Contracted as a co-branded piece with equipment manufacturer, Delphi, the XM package is designed to contain a variety of product configurations while meeting the requirements of multiple retailers.
Thumbnails (above: click for larger view)
The first stage of the package design process is broad idea generation with an eye toward reasonable possibility through the use of quick sketches called thumbnails—essentially a Brainstorm session on paper.
Even in this early ideation phase, function and manufacturing objectives established in earlier logistic explorations are at the forefront of the design rationale.
A plump and friendly ovate design—suitable for both pegged and stand-alone shelf display—captured the team’s attention. It features an interchangeable outer shroud designed to accommodate variable messaging and XM product differentiation.
Rough Refinements (above: click for larger view)
Of the 32 initial thumbnails, five are selected for tighter “rough? conceptual sketches. The rough design stage serves several purposes. Roughs allow the customer to collaborate in a conceptual dialog with both Brainstorm and their own internal team.
In addition, roughs allow the design team to further reconcile a host of issues—from substrate selection to detail and aesthetic considerations. Increasingly the form is discussed with a heightened sensitivity to relative manufacturing requirements and capabilities.
Although computer-generated designs are great for visualization, introducing them too early in the development process can consume allotted resources and generate fewer options. Furthermore, their finished look can ignite concerns about exhausting budgets without the benefit of conceptual buy-in.
Design Control Drawings (DCD) (above: click for larger view)
DCD drawings are to final fit and finish what roughs are to concepts. In this case, the forms are expressed as orthographic projections, i.e., front, right side and plan (top) views.
The primary intent of this phase is to convey relative proportions and relationships between forms within the package, i.e., to “control? the design. A rough and wispy hand drawn line could mean anything to a packaging engineer. Conversely, detailed and dimensioned schematics begin to define a working reality.
Of course, many issues were addressed during the XM DCD phase: Drop test considerations, proper cavity allowance for nested accessories, marrying the outer shroud with the stand-alone clamshell, substrate selection and opacity levels, inherent multi-part clamshell tooling considerations, etc.
Rapid Prototyped 3D Model (above)
Project participants hailed from several continents. So, to help bridge geographic and language-based barriers, we produced a quick 3D model based on data and dimensioning extrapolated from the vector-based DCD drawings. The model proved a useful discussion tool in describing general functions of the package.
Aesthetic and Messaging (above: click for more initial design examples)
Although this article primarily explores the physical form development of a package, the aesthetic process is important enough to warrant an article of its own.
Some aspects of messaging development begin as early as the thumbnail stage. However, on many levels, full graphic exploration doesn’t begin until a form factor direction is set. At retail, messaging and brand continuity are crucial.
A Finished Package (above: click for larger view)
Although concessions were made along the way, the completed two-part package is remarkably similar to the original concept design in form and function.
According to their tagline, The Greener Grass.org is “Collaborating to design a better future.” With that and your health in mind, they created the Vessel concept, a system of components and options that would allow you to customize a drink to fit your personal tastes as well as your health and lifestyle needs.
With these three main bases and countless options, it’s about as far removed from today’s mainstream beverage model as you can get.
Bases: Nutrients to fit your lifestyle and demographic needs such as iron and calcium for women, or zinc and saw palmetto for men.
Flavors: Organic extracts to sate your specific tastebuds—everything from chocolate to wheatgrass, mango to mocha, or any imaginable combination in between.
Agents: Active ingredients like vitamins, minerals, and energy boosters for functional benefits—you name it, proteins or taurine, caffeine or ginseng—whatever you need.
The concept includes a reusable Vessel Lexan™ container strategically designed for optimum ingredient agitation.
Making the Concept Count
Programmatic design, packaging and convenience count in brand marketing. Whether or not the Vessel line ever comes to fruition, the concept is far more believable and supportable when visualized as a fully-branded product rendering.
Strong concepts become real through strong visualization.
Brainstorm Named Best of Show in International W3 Web Awards
Iconic Site Launch
Developed by Brainstorm for Anderson University and Warner Press WarnerSallman.com features, among other iconic images, “The Head of Christ,” from The Warner Sallman Collection - an image so famous it's been reproduced more than 500 million times worldwide. More from the Herald Bulletin article about the site.
under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.
Our 2008 Multiple Sclerosis holiday project. Every run of Brainstorm's holiday, "Memory Machine," generated ¢.25 for the Multiple Sclerosis Society - up to $5000. It went viral fast - the $5k was just a memory by the time our holiday dinner started.
Brainstorm's 2007 holiday blog parody. A new post everyday featured the ongoing drama of an entirely fictitious corporation replete with fictitious products. Items like the "iPlanet,"NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.” Our content was tongue-in-cheek, but the chocolate and gifts we sent to commenters were quite real.
Author: Ed 
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