Last month we were invited by friend and colleague Vicki Küng, co-creator of the Museum of Robots, to give a presentation to the Chief Officers Reaching Excellence (CORE) of The International Housewares Association. We spoke about Branding and Packaging, both topics that we had heard cause the members confusion and grief.

This was a terrific group of about 30 entrepreneurs — heads of companies, marketers, sales people and product designers. Throughout, their questions were targeted and they sparked suggestions from one another as well as from Debra and myself. It was a fun meeting!

I’ve participated in decision-maker groups for many years and this was one of the best organized and frankly, most valuable that I’ve seen.

The first section of our presentation Branding 101 was a very pared down over-view of a big topic. It’s a subject we’re passionate about. But it was clearly the Packaging portion that most piqued the member’s interest. Luckily, between us we have more years developing packaging than we’d like to admit to. We’ve designed, presented, printed and overseen packaging FOREVER!

We talked about the packaging process, common questions and showed examples of how packaging impacts a company’s image and sales in both positive and negative ways. And most importantly, we shared how packaging is an expression of the brand. If the company gets their ‘brand house’ in order, the packaging process will be a lot easier and more successful.

Here are a few of the topics we covered:

Q – I have a “natural” organic, biodegradable product and everyone in my category is using the color green to identify themselves and their packaging. What can I do to stand out?

A – Try using a bright second color that you can potentially “own” to identify your company. Or find another completely new way to say that you are “green” without using green. Your product isn’t in a box so its “greenness” is easily recognizable by how it looks and feels. Because this is true, another color might work very well for you to stand out in a sea of green.

Q – What about QR (Quick Read) codes? Are they here to stay? 

A – Everyone agreed that they are becoming more common and popular as more people use their SmartPhones at point of sale to scan the codes, launching a mini-site that allows the manufacturer to instantly have a one-on-one conversation with that potential customer.

Q – What about sustainability? I get questions about it all the time.

A – Our only comment here is to be authentic and communicate and not to ‘green wash’. If you are doing your best to be eco-responsible tell your customers. It’s the lack of honesty and authenticity that is causing companies problems.

Q – I’m being told I need to have a dual language package to sell into Canada. How do I do it?

A – Start with a professional translation group. You’ll need to accurately (and possibly regionally) translate every word of your package and the free on-line translations will not do the job. Remember, French is about 20% longer than English so your package design will want to take that into account. And of course you’ll want to pare down text as much as possible by using icons, symbols and bullet points to communicate the features and benefits. Members contributed that even if the retailer doesn’t require dual-language packaging, your competition may complain and create difficulties so it’s best to handle translation at the start.

At the end of a great two hours, we hope we left the group with our most important message…Packaging is an expression of your brand. Know your brand and all of your communication effort – whether it be web, packaging or PR –will be stronger and much easier.

A creative & inspiring ride, “Inception Park’ is the work of filmmaker and visual effects artist Fernando Livschitz.

It’s a two-minute vid, click on the image and feel the breeze…

And tell us what has inspired you lately.

The green twin-tailed mermaid now looks to us like a cruise line logo.

Do you think it will have any effect?

We recently re-watched their documentary, “Powers of Ten”. The Eameses believed that both the problems and opportunities of the world are mainly matters of scale. They believed that a deep understanding of scale will make us better citizens and help us find answers to the world’s biggest challenges. “Powers of Ten” is a tool in achieving an understanding of the relative size of things in fresh and powerful new ways.

This Sunday is October 10th, 2010, or 10.10.10. Numerous celebrations are happening across the globe. Find out more and watch the film.

We love this quote from Charles Eames—
“Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects…the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se…I don’t believe in this ‘gifted few’ concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing. They have a way of getting good at whatever it is”.

What do you think about the power of scale and proportion to solve the world’s challenges?

Eames Diagram of Design

This year, hundreds of artists from all over the world created more than 200 images in many styles. It’s a beautiful celebration of art, music and culture all for a cause we believe in.

Artists at work

Kids are invited to paint, too

More than 60,000 come to see the art each year

This ‘off-the-grid’ vessel is the definition of sustainable design and cutting edge technologies. The Plastiki is engineered from 12,000 reclaimed plastic bottles, solar panels, wind turbines, bicycle generators, hydroponic vertical gardens, a rain water catchment system, and an evaporator for desalination. The mast and sail are made from reclaimed and recycled materials while organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane reinforces the structure.

Taking inspiration from the 1947 expedition, the Kon-Tiki, the Plastiki is exploring environmental hotspots such as damaged coral reefs, soon to be flooded island nations, and in particular plastic pollution in our oceans.

Carrying a crew of 6, the Plastiki is currently traveling at about 5 knots from San Francisco to Sydney, a voyage estimated to take 3 months.

Waste does not appear in nature. It’s time to re-think waste and look at it as a resource. For us this is the essence of creativity and design — being curious, letting go of assumptions, collaborating, and effecting positive change.

Frieling, popular for their elegant french presses, also have a great product called the Smellkiller.
Just rub this cool-looking stainless steel disk (like a bar of soap) to remove the smell from your hands after working with raw garlic. Place it in a dish of water to eliminate odors from your kitchen. All this with zero chemicals (the stainless steel/water combination breaks up odor-causing molecules on contact). It works all over–in the dishwasher, fridge, bathroom, laundry room, on the dog or in the car…they even have a model that freshens your breath! (Zilo-POP).

Smellkillers lasts a lifetime. And that means not ever having to buy air freshener again.

We attended two great presentations:
Catherine Del Spina of NextLife www.nextlife.com explored the ABC’s of a green vocabulary. Are you familiar with the terms ‘greenwashing’ and ‘green guilt’? Greenwashing refers to companies using messaging about sustainability and conservation when in reality they’re highest concern is protecting their bottom line. Example: Hotel room cards asking you to please protect the environment by reusing your towels and linens … and coincidentally they save a bundle on laundry expenses. And we experience green guilt each time we throw away excessive packaging and styrofoam peanuts.

Colleagues Vicki and Richard Küng www.kungdesign.com spoke of the power of connecting passion to social media marketing. Brilliant.

Time to relax and have fun. Outside on the streets we found delicious art…and food. We explored the new modern wing at the Art Institute and visited the Contemporary (and noticed our client Kuhn Rikon’s products in the museum shop). More high points were a truly memorable dinner at TRU, as well as good eats at Frontera and vegging out at Green Zebra….

Our kind of town, indeed.

Brancussi Sculpture, Chicago Art Institute

Yours, Ours :: Museum of Contemporary Art

Kuhn Rikon at MCAC's museum shop

Frontera Grill

Reflections in Cloud Gate, Millennium Park

Michigan Avenue in the rain

Last summer, IKEA decided to change that solid san serif logo and add tiny serifs. This may seem like an inconsequential change in the look of their logo, but actually is costing IKEA millions to implement. The signage, the catalogs (the third most printed book in the world), the Web…all of it would have to be replaced with the new logo. Not only expensive, it’s a tremendous risk to their brand identity to fuss with a trusted logo. And this is one of the most well-recognized logos in the world.

Why did they do it?

Answer: Verdana is the new Futura

IKEA’s old font, a refined version of Futura (actually called Ikea Sans) is a print-centric font.

The new font, Verdana, is the ubiquitous Microsoft-designed typeface found on nearly all computers and the Web.

The change to Verdana allows the company to use a uniform font in all countries and languages and to use the same font in print and on the Web.

I see the advantages, but unfortunately, think this change, though perhaps infinitesimal in most shopper’s minds, depreciates a trusted brand identity and questions IKEA’s long admired design philosophy.

What do you think?

Kuhn Rikon Switzerland was already and industry leader in Europe when they asked us to help build their worldwide brand. We’ve developed their positioning statement, key messages and tag line in addition to hundreds of packages, ads, point-of-sale displays and catalogs.

Each year the product design team, led by Swiss Designer Philipp Beyeler, has cooked up beautiful, innovative, stylish, and award-winning tools for both serious and home chefs. These cooks’ tools regularly win praise and awards, like the Easy-Squeeze Garlic Press, a tool that Cooks Illustrated calls ‘the Winner’. And there’s the March issue of Dwell Magazine which includes the Mortar & Pestle in their article ‘All in Good Taste’. And numerous Kuhn Rikon products are included for sale at the MoMA store.

We like the ergonomic shapes–and the sense of whimsy–in many of the tool designs.

We’re proud to work with Rudy Keller and the Kuhn Rikon team and we have no reservations about urging you to keep an eye on what they’re serving up next.