11.12.17
Made with Local built an amazing brand with great creative assets. Starting out at the Seaport Market, their Real Food Bars quickly gained a loyal following that soon grew from cult status. The packaging story, personally told, was magic.
But once Sobeys came calling, Real Food Bars needed to reach out to a larger audience, who likely wasn’t familiar with their product. Unfortunately, it was pretty hard to tell what Real Food Bars even were, the product description was tiny.
Rarebird set out to create a new packaging standard that (in no particular order):
a) felt like home to the current customer
b) was easy to use as a platform for new products
c) stood out on shelf
d) magnified the best parts of the brand (we call them the little dudes)
e) elevated us above the ‘DIY’ brand trend
f) got all the little details right, like typesetting the ingredients
g) was easy to create new flavours
h) spoke quickly to the uninitiated.
In short, we nailed it. From our initial Sobeys trial, Real Food Bars listings have grown and grown. The packaging platform was extended successfully to Loaded Oats, and more recently to their latest product, Real Food Bar Mix. We’ve launched a seasonal Gingerbread flavour, and the all new “Coconut in the Dark”.
The little dudes are super happy.
17.03.16
Upon spinning off Ascenta Skin, Marc St-Onge asked Rarebird to reimagine what was internally perceived as the ugly duckling in Ascenta Health’s natural health portfolio into a white swan properly aligned with the independent spa and beauty market. Taking full advantage of the this potential catalyst for growth, Rarebird undertook a full repositioning and branding exercise, creating an engaging presence tuned for relaunch into the beauty sector.
07.10.15
As a multi-faceted community project, our job was to create a brand for Common Roots that espoused their values, connected with their members, but also upped the game so they could reach a sophisticated audience of donors and grown-local buyers. In creating the brief, we realized this brand needed to function well dressed up or dressed down; it needed to belong in the rough and tumble farm environment, on a beautiful bunch of flowers, and at a high end fundraiser.
The hand-drawn logotype, that alludes to plot boxes for many, feels simultaneously rough and sophisticated, structured and human. We build a colour palette from existing colours to stand out and work well with different products and production needs. To complement the new logo, we paired with Anna Ramsay for some hand drawn veggie illustrations to bring some fun and context.
The new branding is carried across various applications, such as stamps for their paper bags and flower bouquet wrappers, stickers and signage. Rarebird’s own Lizane Tan created the fabric signs.
07.07.15
In developing a labelling system for a hand dyeing company selling high end yarns for knitters, we strove to reflect the tactility of the yarn and include a process like theirs, with an organic nature. For stock we picked a real felt paper, and to match the irregularity, we created large areas of thermography which provides an organic final result.
Check out our tags featured on For Print Only.
The Hand Maiden website was designed to highlight the subtle characteristics of each yarn and the luscious colours they’re dyed in.
As two consumer brands run out of the same parent company, it only made sense to create shared language for use with their direct customers— yarn shops. Borrowing elements from each public brand, but brought together in new ways, the B2B branding is both familiar and distinct.
Using only black to allow the individual brands and product colours to shine and simultaneously save on production costs, the brand is used for shipping boxes, a cross-selling retailer wholesale ordering site, e-newsletters, price sheets and new product sample packs.
05.08.14
The revised branding retains the logotype from the previous version while reimagining the original ram’s head, and telling a Fleece Artist story on the interior of the label –setting the stage. The blue/grey sits beautifully against any combination of colours in the skein, and heralds the beginning of a full update of communication materials.
Branding is carried out in the Fleece Artist website and in the knitting patterns that embrace the warm crafted character of its yarns.
