Product & Brand Background

Madhava Agave: Package Re-Design

Product: Agave

Brand name: Madhava Sweeteners

Target Market:

Health conscious women between the ages of 25 and 45. Education ranges from high school graduates to post college graduates, with the highest majority having graduated high school, and with at least 2 years of college experience. Though a portion of these women are professionals, the majority are mothers and all of them care about sugar consumption in their homes. They are always look out for alternatives to high processed sugars and foods.

Madhava Mission Statement:

To provide healthier sweet food choices that people trust and love.

Brand History:

Madhava started in 1973, when founder, Bart Utley, began selling honey out of the back of his van in Boulder Canyon. What started as a humble five-acre farm with two beehives and a whole bunch of alfalfa has become a recognized and trusted provider in the sweetener category. Madhava comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “Born of Honey;” it is derived from the Sanskrit word “madhu” which means “sweet”. Madhava is the perfect name for a true, natural foods company dedicated to providing healthy alternatives to highly processed, refined sugars and artificial sweeteners.

Product History:

In 2003, Madhava was the first company to introduce organic agave to the U.S. market. Agave nectar is known as the “super sweetener,” made from the natural juice of the blue agave plant. Madhava’s agave is organically grown and sustainably farmed in the Sierra Madres region of Mexico.

Agave nectar is derived from an extremely hearty desert plant, the Weber Blue Agave. Since it receives its annual water needs from the local late summer rainy season, agave can be grown without any irrigated water. And since it thrives in poor soil, it’s naturally pest-resistant. These factors help eliminate the need for pesticides and chemical fertilizers, making it even easier to maintain agricultural practices that meet organic certification standards.  Blue Agave Tequilana is native to Mexico’s rugged terrain in the state of Jalisco and has been farmed since the days of the Aztec for food and fiber.

Product history taken from Madhava’s website.

Redesign

The Plan:

The current package is not an eye catcher. If someone were not specifically looking for it, they wouldn’t even notice it on the top shelf of the grocery store. The goal with this package re-design is to help the package advertise the product and grab shoppers’ attention while it’s just sitting on the shelf.

With a design that will grab the attention of the perusing shopper, Madhava Agave will sell better and warrant more brand loyal consumers due to the feel good design and classiness of the packaging.

Requirements:

Clean, minimal design

Must grab attention

Though the product should grab attention, it must remain classy and elegant

Inspiration:

I have been doing a lot of research and looking at different package designs that I like and would like to emulate in this project.  here is a collection of product designs I liked on a Pinterest board.

Here are a few examples and styles that I liked:

Official Color Scheme and Typography

Typography:

For my main product logo, I wanted to use a natural, aztec inspired typeface that reflects the Aztec decorations and designs with the sort of maze look to it.  As for the body copy on the back of the bottle, I chose to make the rest of the type on the label black inorder to repeat the matted black of the cap seal.

Primary Font:

Custom made

Secondary Font:

Colaborate – Regular

Body Copy Font:

Colaborate – Light

Size Recommendations:

Size for subheadings: 16 pt & 24 pt

Size for body copy: 6 pt & 7 pt

Size for body Headings: 12pt

Logo Re-creation:

The current logo is not cohesive with the new style and feel or the packaging, so I simply re-created the same logo without the brown shape in the background.

Construction:

Gathering Supplies:

I am a huge fan of Amazon Prime!  Free two-day shipping, yes please.  It’s so great not having to wait a week or more to get what you need (especially when you live in a small town that doesn’t offer everything you need).   I ordered my bottles and caps from Specialty Bottle and I ordered my gold and teal foils from Simon Says Stamp.  I was really impressed with how quickly those two companies shipped the products.

The Label:

For the Agave prototype package, I manually foiled the areas that will eventually be a metallic pantones on the label.  In production, the gold foil areas will use Pantone Metallic 8385 C and the teal foil areas will use Pantone Metallic 8264 C.  For purposes of this prototype, the label is run through the printer twice.  Each time the only ink used is a black toner ink.  The first pass prints only the areas that will be foiled and the second pass prints the non-foiled type.

Foil on the Label:

Print the first round on a transparent adhesive label.  A laser print must be used because laser printers use toner, which is what we really need to make the foil stick and bake onto the label.

I was not sure if the gold foil process would work on an adhesive label.  I did a test print of my label and cut a small portion off to run through the laminator.  I was half expecting it not to work, but it actually held up (even on the hottest setting on my laminator).  I applied the small piece of label to the frosted test bottle, and it stuck just fine.

I tried using a gold leaf while I waited for my foil to arrive, but it does NOT work.  I knew that it was not the right stuff, but I just got so excited and wanted to try it out.

I am going to use a foil as an accent on the label to add a classier feel to the product packaging as well as to help draw an association to the Aztecs (The Aztecs prized the agave as a gift from the gods and used the liquid from its core to flavor foods and drinks).

Applying gold foil

Once the foil is baked on the label, it’s time to send it through the printer again to put the rest of the content on the label.

All that was left to do after the label was printed was to trim the label and construct the bottle.

The Bottle:

Starting with the glass bottle, I cleaned the surface and frosted the outside of the bottle with a basic frosted glass spray paint.  In production, the bottles would be ordered pre-frosted for food safety purposes.  I chose to frost my bottles because it makes the overall appearance less glossy and shiny and gives it a more matted look.  I chose to use a matted look for the Agave packaging primarily to give it a feel of a higher end product.

Putting the Agave in:

I transferred the actual agave into the bottle and then applied the trimmed label.  As I applied the label, I used a plastic card to smooth down all of the label to avoid air bubbles and flaws.  I took a few photos with my phone to document this details.

Sealing the Bottle:

This process was really fun.  I ordered some PVC heat shrink seal (matte black) to seal the bottle and give it a high end, refined look.  I have to cut the seal down a little bit because it was too long.  I then simply put it on the top of the bottle and turned my heat gun on and applied a little heat and it just shrunk right to the bottle top.  I then placed a transparent, round label on the top and a simple label around the neck of the bottle.

Final Product

Photography:

Road Bumps and Challenges

Challenge/ Problem 1:

I originally planned on using gold as the primary foil through out the design.  When I put the agave in the bottle with a test label, I found the it wasn’t going to work out because the gold foil is too close to the color of the agave.  Instead, I went with the teal foil as the main foil though out the label and used the gold as an accent color.

When sealing the foil to the toner on the adhesive label, some of the color from my text on the rest of the label transferred to the cover paper I used to run the label through.  I will have to change the areas I want to be gold to a solid black and try that other wise I will have to run the label through the printer twice to get the look I want.  In production there are processes that make this very possible on a large scale.

Full Redesign Pitch Book

Client Pitch

Sources:

http://madhavasweeteners.com/about/#mission