Projector

Here at Projector, we’ve been on a packaging research mission. It’s been a long time since we’ve produced any packaging work, usually staying in the realm of graphic design. But with some prospective design work for one of our clients in Newcastle we thought we should have a look through our archives and highlight some really great pieces of work. Whilst on our travels, we’ve come across some really beautiful examples of packaging and decided to give you our Top Ten Packaging examples. Let us know if there’s any great examples we’ve missed! We haven’t given rankings, as all are winners in our book.

A great solution for getting just the right amount of spaghetti from design student Neal Fletcher.

Buddy Mulled Wine using inspired copy and measuring jug graphics.

A minimalist, beautiful solution from BVD for Restylane, with some nice print finishing.

Traditional illustration livening up tortilla packaging for United Supermarkets by Imaginaria.

Love in Manchester suggesting some fun ways to re-use your Silver Cross packaging.

Pentagram introducing a bold typographic look to Budgens own brand wine range.

Albion producing the lovely looking, category breaking, gourmet dog food brand Lily’s Kitchen.

Pearlfisher with a very rustic typography route for Jamie Oliver’s Jme range.

Dentsu Young & Rubicam Pte producing an innovative use of the bikini string for tan-thru bikini brand Buttcheeks.

My favourite of the lot, Panasonic Earphones packaging, brilliant use of shape from Scholz & Friends Berlin.

We hope you enjoyed the Projector Top Ten Packaging!

Projector are currently: Preparing to head off to a conference!

Projector are pleased to welcome Glen Craig to the team as Senior Designer. Glen brings with him over eight years industry experience – and having worked with previous client Microsoft he helps support our sector expertise in technology communications. Other past clients include Yell.com, Eaga, NewcastleGateshead Initiative, Shell Enterprise and the NHS.

Glen, very much a ‘local lad’, studied at Northumbria University and since graduating has worked in several design agencies, “none as good as this one”, (He’s obviously still trying to make friends!)

Projector are currently: Ploughing through a monster truck load of work

Now we come to our second part in a three-way article on sustainability and green issues on design. As the wider business and brand community is evolving, so should we. Brands should be held accountable and responsible for their actions, in maintain high standards of ethical, social and environmental performance.

The General Impact of Print

In the Envirowise Attitudes 2000 survey, print came at the foot of the table in terms of industries that had adopted environmental policies. Paper and print is the UK’s 4th largest industry. A large quantity of the print industry is dictated by the jobs we spec as Graphic Designers, so essentially we are in a position to do something about it. I’m going to take a look at the values of the various kinds of printing, to show you how Projector is working with their suppliers in improving environmental performance.

We work with our partners Statex Colour Print who are proud of being ISO 14001 registered. ISO 14001 is an internationally recognised scheme which provides the accredited business with ongoing environmental monitoring and continual improvement. They are up to date with suggested improvements. These improvements cover recycling rates, reductions in energy useage, water consumption and general efficiency procedures. Not only does this help Statex be actively conscious of their impact upon the environment, but also reduces the overall costs of their day to day running. In addition to this Statex are part of the FSC’s (Forestry Stewardship Council – see part one of this article for an explanation) Chain of Custody which ensures there is no contamination of their business with non-FSC approved paper.

Lithography/Offset Printing

There are five main areas of Lithographic printing which prove troublesome for the environment. First of all there is the overall use of energy. As with other large industries, print uses significant amounts of energy. But when considered alongside other large industries, it is estimated in a recent 2009 World Resources Institute Survey Chart (link) that the Paper and Print Industries are only responsible for 1.1% of Greenhouse Gases due to it’s activities. Our printers Statex, as mentioned above, endeavour to reduce their carbon emissions, if not offset them.

The Print Industry generates quite a high level of waste. A lot of this can be recycled, but some still ends up in landfill. Waste inks can be recycled as low grade fuel. The tins which contain the ink are crushed and recycled. Ink Cartridges, which are usually preferred over tins are occasionally classed as hazardous waste and sent to ‘special waste landfill’. Environmentally conscious printers will have these collected and recycled into things such as drainpipes etc.

Waste chemicals are a big issue. If your printer is conscious of the impact the chemicals used in printing can have on the environment then they will choose to use ‘bio-digestable’ chemicals for cleaning. These can be made safe before being flushed into the water system. Plastic wrapping for palettes is mostly sent to landfilll, but if washed it can be shredded and be recycled into more plastic wrapping.

Isopropyl alcohol (IPA) is a harmful solvent that is used as a dampening solution within print. When it dries releases Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) colourless gases that contribute to the production of ozone gases as well as being dangerous for pressroom workers. This is completely avoidable, as if printers maintain their equipment to a high standard then they need not use the dampener. Alternatively they can use alcohol-free technology.

In terms of inks there are five main areas of concern. Barium, copper and zinc are contained in certain pigments of inks and cause environmental as well as worker health hazards. Metallic and fluorescent inks are usually the most toxic. These inks do not decompose as well as other inks and the metal component causes problems in Groundwater. VOC’s as mentioned previously are a problem in petroleum based inks if used. Soya inks are the most prevalent in recent times, rather than petroleum based inks. These are generally three parts linseed to one part soya. By using soya inks you’re reducing health and environmental hazards plus avoiding using a non-renewable harmful resource. But part of the Soya industry has had some international pressure, so it isn’t entirely a black and white decision to make. Finally, there is the wastage of ink. You can recycle ink and make it into low grade foil, or use remnants to form black ink. But as some inks are quite toxic, it’s usually entombed underground with concrete in hazardous waste landfill sites.

Digital Printing

The downsides are that digital inks are quite difficult to remove in the recycling process. Also, the choice of papers you can use is limited to digital approved papers which are rarely recycled or FSC certified. The printers themselves take large amounts of energy to produce. But there are increasing advancements being made in this area which reduce the amount of energy being produced in their production.

However you can run a job as and when it is needed with reprinting costing no extra. This means you don’t have to worry about running out of extra copies. In addition to this, there is no make ready waste as that of Lithography/Offest Printing.

Screen Printing

The inks used in screen printing traditionally has contained more solvents than litho inks. However these days, many screen printers use UV inks, that are cured underneath a UV lamp. This uses more energy, more positively however, it removes solvents from the printing process. However in the reclamation and cleaning of the screens for re-use, solvents are still abundant in use. It is important, when using solvents to clean screens to use the least hazardous. When we opt to use screen printing we have a good relationship with Northern Print who’s expertise guide us to acheiving top quality prints, which can be environmentally conscious in production.

With the resources at our disposal, don’t hesitate to ask us how we can help you ensure that your printed communications reduce their carbon footprint. We’re more than happy to help.

The final part of this article will be based around how we can suggest gearing the specification of your communications to be more environmentally conscious.

References and more information

Lovely as a Tree

Two Sides

The Guardian – What’s the carbon footprint of…the internet?

World Research Institute

Statex Colour Print

Envirowise Attitudes 2000 survey

There are a lot of questions to pose, when it comes to assessing how sustainable you can be, not only as an individual, but as a brand. This article sets out to highlight what we can do as individuals to consider the environment more when it comes to specify print work. It’s not only what paper you use, or whether your ink is vegetable based, you should try your best to cover all of the bases from the beginning to end of production. It’s our responsibility as Brand Consultants to remind our clients of the ethical side of their brand’s communications (as they have lots of other things to think about).

Green is a term which brands are very much trying to align themselves with in recent times. It’s become expected. Which is quite worrying, as a lot of brands are simply jumping on the bandwagon and using it as a catchphrase rather than a real ideology. It’s really up to brands to take the issue seriously and prove that they are doing their part to promote sustainability in their business.

For the first part of this investigation, we’re going to look at the use of paper within print.

General Advice on Choosing Your Paper

As a general guideline for sourcing your environmentally friendly paper always look out for the FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) products or the 100% recycled logo. The FSC is an international, non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting responsible management of the world’s forests. Treat anything that claims to be sustainable without these logos with caution. It is widely agreed that FSC Certification is the best certification available, as it’s emphasis in on tracking the fibre all the way from the forest to it’s use.

We’ve bought over £125K of print this year on behalf of our clients and we can trace through the FSC COC over 95% of it (because our criteria for choosing the right stock for a client of piece of work includes it being FSC-certified).

The FSC examines and accredits using a set of principles and criteria which take into consideration a wide range of environmental, social and economic factors. These include indigenous people’s rights, community and workers’ rights, environmental impact, monitoring and assessment of the forest and maintenance of high conservation value forests.

The number of FSC-certified forests is growing exponentially, covering an estimated 84 million hectares worldwide, around 10% of the world’s production forest.

There are three different kinds of FSC certified paper. FSC Mixed Sources is virgin paper from FSC approved forests, which is then mixed with “controlled sources” fibre. This means there is no chance that illegally harvested timber, violation of peoples’ civil and traditional rights or trees where high conservation values are threatened have been involved in the production of the paper. 100% FSC is made by a certified mill. FSC Recycled contains a minimum of 85% post-consumer waste and up to 15% pre-consumer waste made by an FSC certified mill.

There is also the PEFC Council (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes) which is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organisation that promotes sustainably managed forests through independent third party certification.

Lovely as a Tree asserts that the FSC is the only water tight regulator of forestry, which is supported Greenpeace and the WWF, but PEFC also offers certification that they work throughout the entire forest supply chain, ensuring that paper produced adheres to the highest ecological, social and ethical standards.

We practice what we preach. We’ve visited many of the European and UK mills that our paper comes from with GF SMITH – the UKs leading supplier of fine papers. And our relationship with the likes of GF SMITH is so good we’re often asked for opinion on new products and kept informed of product development so we’re very knowledgeable – and happy to advise.

Recycled paper

To avoid sounding patronising and as everyone knows about it already, I won’t explain the concept of recycling. But recycled paper is basically re-used waste paper and board. This waste paper is screened for unwanted items (such as adhesives, binding and inks) and can be re-bleached using hydrogen peroxide, depending on the desired final quality of the new recycled paper product. 

It is undoubtedly stuff of myth that recycled paper is of a poor quality. In the last 20 years there has been significant advancement in papermaking technology. In a lot of cases it is now very hard, if not impossible to tell the difference between recycled paper and virgin paper. For example if you wish to have a pure white uncoated stock, you can find recycled papers which compare very well with premium uncoated grades for brightness and whiteness.

Bright warning lights certainly flash when seemingly untoward things such as De-inking and hydrogen peroxide are mentioned. However the De-inking process is not harmful to the environment as it uses sodium hydroxide (the main ingredient in soap) as detergent and is also used in low doses commerically to wash things such as fruit and vegetables. The sludge which is generated from the process can be used as a fertiliser.

Hydrogen peroxide is widely used as the bleaching agent for the paper industry. Which is harmless.

Using recycled paper reduces the amount of waste paper that goes to landfill. It is predicted that in around ten years, we will have ran out of landfill sites, which will result in their replacement by incinerators. These incinerators’ emissions have been proven to be harmful to human health. Paper is one of the few materials that can be completely recycled. The latest figure for the UK in terms of recycling rates for paper sees the rate at 71%.

Sustainable Forestry when concerned with Paper Making

Often “sustainable forestry” is thought to be when trees are replanted after they have been cut down. This is not the case. A truely sustainable forest, in an ideal world, would be one which sustains native wildlife, plants and non-commercial trees as well as a renewable supply of timber.

Some managed plantations are geared to provide a maximum yield of timber and sometimes limited to only a couple of variants of trees, all of the same age. These species often need fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides and generally don’t support indigenous species, resulting in a dramatic drop in animal, bird and insect populations. It’s important to choose paper from truly sustainable sources.

The best bet is again to go with the FSC or PEFC. A lot of timber is imported into the UK and most of it is uncertified, but some of it will have been monitored by the FSC and PEFC.

If you wish to make certain that your paper has not had a detrimental effect on a forest environment, choose 100% recycled paper.

The good news is that the UK is the most environmentally conscious with 71% of all paper and board produced in the UK is recovered for reuse either in the UK or for export.

I hope this has enlightened you when it comes to considering which paper stock we suggest you use in your printed materials. In addition, it should help to dispel some of the myths that the paper industry is a voracious planet polluter. On a comms project there will be a time necessary for us to start choosing paper on behalf of our clients. We will always look out for the FSC-certified products or the 100% recycled logo.

Part Two will address green concerns of the print process itself.

References

Lovely as a Tree 

Two Sides

Print Mag

Here it is, part two in this two-some of articles, as mentioned previously it will be based upon the more intangible side of branding, rather than the visual aspect. There are far more things you can compare when concerned with brands, than only the physical product, it’s function and visual environment.

There is a great example used by Wally Olins to explain this. If you look at the way we interact with a restaurant, you can begin to understand how different aspects of branding fuse together. Ultimately, the main part of how we judge a restaurant is by the standard of it’s food. The product. However, a significant part of the experience is also the environment, which is very important. If it is well designed, or special in it’s own way, it does affect you greatly. The service you receive, the behaviour of the brand, is a considerable factor also. If you receive a slow inattentive service it can quickly change your opinion of what you thought was a wonderful experience. Communication then plays it’s part by you spreading your opinions of your experience to your family and friends through word of mouth. 

The way a brand communicates (aside from visually), is how it is telling it’s audience about itself and what it is doing. It is important that your brand maintains a coherent and appropriate tone of voice across your organisation that extolls the positive virtues of your brand’s core idea.Take for example, one of our client’s Positive Solutions Financial Services. They are the UK’s biggest National IFA firm with over 1700 Independent Financial Adviser(IFAs), each operating under their own steam, but all of them under the Positive Solutions core brand. These individuals are called PS Partners. Positive Solutions approached us with the hope of creating a fixed tone of voice that would span across it’s range of marketing materials, making it’s Partners adopt it’s tone of voice – and thus keeping the brand consistent. We created a range of personalisable branded marketing templates, ranging from leaflets and posters, to stationery and HTML emails that are available through an Online Ordering System. The content of these marketing materials is monitored with all of the available options being screened through Positive Solutions’ compliance and marketing departments, this ensures that IFAs, when using the PS Branding, are following the FSA’s guidelines. If Partners try and pass through alternative adverts, they are forwarded to the Online Ordering System. Success all round in maintaining tone of voice throughout all printed material.

The internet allows a great amount of communication between company and audience and vice versa, customers also communicate more freely with other customers. It takes a lot of attention and care to make sure your brand is communicating correctly and in turn listening more closely, as there has never been such a cohesive union between brand and consumer. Take for example when a brand uses a Twitter Account. Tone of voice on Twitter is paramount. People don’t follow other users for their background or profile picture. They follow them for what they are saying and how they are saying it. For example if a recruitment consultancy wanted to offer a high quality service, but with the accessibility of lower costs and they wanted to use Twitter as a medium for doing this. Perhaps they could try and exude personality through grown up straight-forward tweeting, but with a hint of humour to promote approachability, so that the audience didn’t deem the brand to be posting their fantastic job opportunities from an unreachable Ivory Tower.

Moving on from communication, what surely comes next is behaviour. How your organisation deals with the people it employs and furthermore the way they deal with your audience. All brands, over all sectors come into contact with their audience in some aspect. This is particularly important when concerned with service led brands. This is due to service brands dealing primarily with person to person experiences. Each employee or customer is different. People vary during the day, have worries and occasionally can suffer frankly amazing harassment from customers. As a service brand the organization is it’s people and those people you must manage. It is impossible to maintain a 100% consistently oustanding brand experience. Through good management of your staff, you can ensure that your goal of going that extra step to be helpful. Help them understand the brand and inspire them to extoll the virtues of the brand to your customers. 

References:

Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook – Thames and Hudson

Projector are currently: Working away, a lot to do.

A logo is simply a recognition device, which has been used throughout history to assure people that the product is associated with the company that provides the product. A common misconception is that the logo is the be all and end all of the visual communication of a brand. It is true that the logo is important, as it should reflect the core idea behind a brand with immediacy. However it isn’t simply the logo which displays a brand’s core idea.

If you look at any industry, you’ll notice that mostly there is very little difference between competitors. It is becoming increasingly harder to stand out. The days of being able to judge a brand on rational terms such as price, quality of product and quality of service are gone. Companies must embrace that a brand essentially, is a product, service or organisation with a personality. A personality which overtly differentiates the company, making people become enamoured with the products or service that the brand offers, “become loyal beyond reason”.

The wingspan of a brand has grown considerably in recent times, with the advent of new technology allowing for a myriad of mediums for a brand to communicate with it’s audience. You need to make sure that your brand has a set of effective visual elements. Not simply a standout logo. Think of brand colours, typefaces, imagery and graphical devices. All of the aforementioned (if deemed necessary to promote the brand’s core idea) should adhere to a coherent system across various media (printed matter, web presence, enviroments etc) that gives your brand idea a unique and memorable appearance.

The times are a changing, and it’s not just clients that need to adapt, as a brand communications consultancy we need to move with the times too. Creating brands that come to life in a physical environment is something that we’ve done very well for years – but the world of social media is changing the goalposts for all. Take recruitment – one of our core service areas which has traditionally needed to differentiate itself, work hard and communicate through the printed media first and foremost is now seeing the vast majority of if it’s work being conducted on LinkedIn and Twitter – the challenge of building a personality through social media is a welcome one (so long as the person doing this recognises the fact they still need to be ‘on brand’) but trying to get across the top-end of sector feel of a recruitment consultancy (which a beautiful printed piece with high end production techniques would do easily) through social media avenues is really when the brand messaging needs to be very joined up.

Over the coming weeks we will be exploring a number of areas which will hopefully inform and inspire you to think more in-depth about how you can make your brand stand apart from the competition! Part two coming soon…

References:
Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook Thames and Hudson
Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi: Lovemarks – The Future Beyond Brands

Projector are currently: Ticking those to-do lists off, preparing diaries for next week and allowing a small droplet of weekend fever to creep in.

A quick blog article posted in reaction to the recent Newsnight debate on infographics involving Graphic Design luminary Neville Brody and Information Designer David McCandless of the website “Information is Beautiful”. The debate was at first glance to talk about infographics – but it was steam-rolled by Brody in to a larger political debate – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for our sector – but it did sort of leave the substance of the topic behind, which is ironic really – as that was Brody’s opinion of many infographics! 

If I were to decide to use Infographics, and I do, then it would be to keep the reader’s attention span when an article were long and dense in content. Innovative use of graphics can draw the user into what was once unsavoury reading. It can’t be denied that a large mass of statistical data does not inspire reading. Infographics can be used to interest people in things, shedding light on some hidden facts they were previously uninterested in.

“Can we get some interesting graphics like the Guardian to help explain the data?” This is an often quoted phrase within the studio by our client base, and we’re not knocking it – the Guardian do it very well, and we enjoy rising to the challenge if it’s the right thing to do. But that’s the point isn’t it? Do it if it’s the right thing to do, but personally, I sometimes find that infographics do stray into the territory of the designer’s personal wants (or clients even), negating their intended use (of delivering a wide range of complicated information in a concise and appealing manner) and being put into use when they aren’t entirely necessary. 

If you wow someone with too intense and beautiful a picture, they may well become entranced with the picture itself, rather than the message it is intended to display. This happens all too often in our industry as it is, and it’s not just restricted to infographics either – how many times do you see a beautifully crafted logo without any substance, or a printed piece without any real content?

Evaluate why you are doing it. Don’t just let the image become the main feature. It’s intention is to visually communicate the data.

What do you guys think?

Projector are currently: About to close up for the day

Happiest of funday fridays to all readers,

We’d just like to let you know that Jamie of Bespoke Radio, has been accepted into the final 10 of gigantic tall man business supremo Peter Jones’s Enterprise Challenge. This is a thoroughly great piece of news, as Jamie has the chance to win a £10,000 cash injection into his business, and in addition to this, 10 hours worth of Legal, Accountancy aid, International Trading top tips, PR Guru support and HR recommendations from leading companies.

Congratulations Jamie! 

You can find out more tit bits of information on the competition here.

Projector are currently: 1 hour away from the weekend. Our weekend activities vary. The Open at St. Andrews, Wallpapering a Guest Room, “not a lot” and going to see Inception. Have a good one!

BBC Radio DJ Jamie Wilkinson set up Bespoke Radio in 2008 after a unique gift he’d created for his gran Joan’s 80th birthday went down a storm. He used his experience and expertise to create a personalised radio show featuring her favourite records, memories and messages from family and friends; she absolutely loved it! Jamie decided to turn the gift experience into a more commercial enterprise, he established Bespoke Radio and through word of mouth the business has grown successfully year on year. 

Although successful, Jamie had ambitious plans for the future of Bespoke Radio and rightly identified his brand as being the starting point for the second phase. The existing brand did not capture the emotional value of the product – while the branding lacked clarity of message and looked more like a business that made bespoke retro radios.

We started from scratch, talking to customers and asking clarifying questions to help build a bigger picture of what the main attraction of the gift was and why it was perceived to be so special. It was clear that Jamie had hit on something unique and incredibly personal, with a gift featuring family and friends voices and stories about them it creates a feeling of nostalgia and makes the recipient feel really special.

We created an identity that reflects these values; with a hand-written style typeface to represent the hand-made appeal of the show and a logo shape based on that of a heart we projected the warm, personal aspect of the gift. The brand is playful yet has the sophistication of a high quality product. We made the colour palette adaptable; a mixture of several bright shades are used alongside white or grey to define the different types of gift available.

In addition to the new logo and key messaging we’ve also designed cd’s, cases and foil-blocked packaging. We also worked with our friends; the always brilliant Union Room, who created a new website where the gifts can be purchased and customised. Check it out here: www.bespokeradio.co.uk

Projector are currently: A little bit embarrassed for the North East