I am currently in the early stages of a project I have been quietly excited about for a while — a full packaging redesign for a heritage food brand that has been trading for over forty years. Without going into details I am not yet able to share, the brief is essentially this: honour what has made the brand recognisable and trusted, while bringing it firmly into the present. It is exactly the kind of creative tension I find most interesting to work with.
Heritage brands present a particular challenge that newer brands do not. There is real equity in the existing design — colours, marks, typographic choices that customers have associated with quality for decades. Change too much and you risk breaking that connection. Change too little and the refresh feels cosmetic. The work is in finding what is essential and what is merely habitual.
I will share more about this project once I am able to. In the meantime, it is a good reminder of why I got into packaging design in the first place — the combination of strategic thinking, visual craft, and the knowledge that the finished work will end up in people’s homes. That never gets old.