Spotlight

June 18, 2019 In Behind the Scenes, Business, Business - Design/Art, Design, General, Ideas, Observation, Opinion, Packaging, Spotlight, Travel

5 Things to Do When Attending the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York

We’re New York City bound for this summer’s Fancy Food Show! Are you? Do you want to go somewhere new while in town for the show? We wanted to share five of our favorite places to visit when we’re in NYC. Try one or a few of these hot spots while you are in town––we promise you won’t regret it!

We would love to meet up during the show and chat about how we can extend your on shelf presence. Click here and we will reach out to set something up!

1. Thea Grant

Whether you are looking for a unique gift to bring home, want a one-of-a-kind statement piece of your own, or want to be inspired––head to Thea Grant in Brooklyn. This charming design-and-lifestyle store is family-run by a talented husband and wife team and offers high end, handmade jewelry and intricate metal pieces. They specialized in uniquely beautiful antique and estate pieces that tell a story, you never know what gem you will find. We could not leave without purchasing a custom stamped brass keychain that they made right in front of us.

BONUS: While in DUMBO, make sure to check out mexican hot spot Gran Eléctrica. We love their fresh eats and unique cocktails, especially on a hot day in the city. If you’re feeling adventurous, sample a few of their speciality tequilas and unwind while dining al fresco.

2. Two Kids and a Dog

While in Brooklyn, stop by Two Kids and a Dog at the Pearl Street Triangle. We stumbled upon this sweet children’s store when searching for the perfect authentic (yet fun) souvenir for our son––a NYC garbage truck toy that was a HUGE hit! The store is perfectly curated with unique toys, children’s clothing, gifts, and speciality items.

3. New York Water Taxi

Looking for a different way to explore the city? Head to the water! The New York Water Taxi to be exact. This is the perfect way to see different parts of the city and its surrounding areas, especially if you are short on time. We suggest buying an all day pass to explore and stop along the way, then hop back on and venture to another part of the city. Our favourite route is to go from Midtown/Hell’s Kitchen to Battery Park to view the exquisite gardens, then head over to South Street Seaport for waterside shopping in unique, restored wharfside buildings from the early 1800’s. From there, we like to head to Brooklyn/DUMBO for some more great shopping and good eats. Then, travel back up to Midtown via the State of Liberty and Ellis Island. Pro tip: bypass the long lines to see the Statue of Liberty, and drive by it while on the water taxi. You get super close and stop for about 10 minutes for some quick photo opportunities. The water taxi guides are very friendly and provide a wealth of knowledge about NYC while ferrying around the city.

4. Gallery Hopping in Chelsea

If you want to explore art galleries, we love to start at 28th Street in Chelsea and snake our way between 10th and 11th Avenues taking in the different art along the way. The galleries are free to enjoy and most are open Monday through Saturday. Make sure to check out this interactive gallery map to see which artists are showing and plan your trip. The last time we gallery hopped, we happened to stumble upon a Damien Hirst exhibit by spotting one of his famous formaldehyde sharks in the gallery’s front window. Cue fanboy/fangirl moment! You never know whose art you will run into. This is a great way to recharge and get inspired by all of the creativity around you.

5. The High Line

It’s hard to believe that the High Line was set to be demolished in the 1990’s! During the 1930’s, the city built this elevated freight rail line above the streets of the West Side in response to the dangers of pedestrians walking on the street level tracks. After dwindling train usage, this space became an unused wasteland. Thankfully, the community pulled together to save this now beautiful 1.45-mile public space that is home to over 500+ species of plants and trees. We love getting fresh air along the greenway and stopping for refreshing treats such as an Italian ice or even pop into a local bar for a quick pint.

We can’t wait to see you at the Summer #FancyFoodShow.

Drop us a line and let’s chat about how we can help amplify your brand’s voice and on shelf presence. Click here to learn more about what we will be doing at the conference or use the form and we’ll reach out to you!

Wanting to try somewhere new to grab dinner after the show? Check out our 5 favorite places to eat while in New York.

Want to meet up and talk branding?

Did you like this? Help us spread the word.

October 4, 2018 In Behind the Scenes, Business - Design/Art, Design, Ideas, Packaging, Spotlight

Behind the Design: TruAde Drinks

With the redesign of TruAde we were tasked with refreshing a heritage brand from the 1930’s to appeal to a new customer while also keeping the spirit and honoring its roots. We tapped into vintage TruAde ephemera for inspiration.

The typography we chose and the elements, including the star, were all inspired by our research. The simple and clean label redesign reinforces a reformulation and streamlining of ingredients as well.

Before & After

For our redesign we wanted TruAde to stand out on the shelf and offer a different look and feel to what we expect from C-store drinks – bubbly effects, splashes, and cartoony illustrations to name a few. We also wanted our design to have more contrast and bold limited colors to grab thirsty shopper’s attention.

Bringing TrAde Packaging Design to Life

These 12 pack can wraps were the most exciting part of the redesign for us. We really wanted to take advantage of the billboard opportunity and elaborate on the design system set up for the single formats. The wavy line shape was a throwback to an old TruAde door sign. You can imagine walking into a C-store and running into a whole display of all those bold colors!

Do you have a beverage (or any product) and need a strategic partner to help? We’re here for you.

LET'S CHAT

June 27, 2018 In Behind the Scenes, Business, Business - Design/Art, Coffee, Design, General, Ideas, Packaging, Spotlight

Defining Your Brand’s Personality Through Illustration

Color, shape, movement, imagery, emotion, brand recognition, sales- illustration is a great solution for capturing and conveying the unique qualities, feelings, and emotions of your product on its packaging design. Whether you chose to be literal or abstract and expressive, illustration can be a great way to help your product to stand out, differentiate your brand from competitors and create brand recognition with shoppers.

While we can talk about illustration all day, we know less talk and more pretty photos are what you crave! So let’s dive in and take a look at a few different examples of illustration in the marketplace including one of our recent projects which features rich, expressive drawings to capture a sense of place.

Bold Characters

Burnt & Salty create bold and unique flavor twists on traditional condiments like mustard and glazes. To capture their daring, irreverent take on traditional cuisine they’ve chosen to highlight a fun illustrated character for each of their flavors with stark silhouettes, crazy eyes, energetic shapes, and bright colors. The playful characters speak to the brand’s personality and adventurous products.

Sauer Frau bills itself as the first ever squeezable sauerkraut, kicking up the bratwurst game a few notches! Sauer Frau’s illustration style feels like something out of a comic book with restrained, formed lines. The “Sauer Frau” character as part of the logo pulls you in with her serious, no nonsense expression. Each flavor in the family has a simple yet bold color associated with it creating an unexpected billboard that still feels relevant in the condiment category.

Literally

Epic Provisions has always done an amazing job showcasing their products through packaging design. One of their latest products, Pork Cracklings, feels like its been pulled from the pages of a mid-century kid’s adventure novel complete with a limited color palette and vintage inspired typography and shapes. The pig illustration is realistic and feels scientific or from a veterinary textbook. The illustrations on their packaging speak directly to their ‘back to basics’ view of food and their desire to utilize the simple yet powerful diets of our ancestors.

Roland Foods is an importer of more than 1500 foods from around the world. They have a variety of packaging design within their product catalog, but the style that caught our eye is the realistic representation of products on their canned food. At first glance it almost reads as a photograph because the illustration is executed so pragmatically, yet upon further inspection you start to see little splashes here and there which add a layered homemade artisan feel to the restrained style.

Our Latest Project – Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters Packaging Redesign

When we first started working on redesigning Virgin Islands Coffee Roaster’s packaging we knew we wanted to find a way to feature the lush colorful views of the Virgin Islands and try to create a sense of place.

We drew inspiration from Dorothy Draper’s iconic tropical floral wallpaper and merged that style with a coffee plant and bananaquit, a bird that is part of the Virgin Islands story and the brand. Wanting the plant to feel wild and organic, we allowed the coffee plant illustration to climb up one side of the front of the coffee bag then spread across the gusset and around the back.

We worked to create the feeling of looking through a coffee farm and discovering this packaging nestled in the leaves. The coffee labels each feature a scientific line drawing behind each coffee name in the product family, which provides a contrast to the more fluid coffee plant. Fresh, exotic, energetic and memorable we feel this packaging redesign captures the spirit of the brand and the product that lives inside.

Click the button below to view our Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters Redesign project and many more ways we’ve helped client’s define their brand’s personality through compelling design.

VIEW MORE WORK

Did you like this? Help us spread the word.

June 3, 2018 In Behind the Scenes, Business - Design/Art, Ideas, Observation, Opinion, Packaging, Spotlight

Behind the Design: The Fresh Market Simmer Sauces

2_tfm_simmer-sauces_single-project_image

Cooler weather has us thinking about warm dishes. Our design for The Fresh Market Simmer Sauces captures the homemade artisan feel of the product. The flavors are inspired by global flavors like Mojo Verde.

Dishes are prepared in a skillet so we utilized the shape as a frame to contain the item name and important information. Combining the skillet shape and the large color field creates an eye catching billboard for these products on the shelf.

3_tfm_simmer-sauces_single-project_image

Handmade Elements for a handmade product

We’re always looking for opportunities to add handmade elements and qualities to our designs, and this label is no different. We feel like these elements create depth and creates interest in the shopper inviting them to pick up the product.

We added texture to further enhance the homemade quality of the sauces. Hand-lettered item names give the product an approachable scratch made feel. The typography is also fun and energetic inspiring home cooks to grab it and go home and create a tasty meal by simply adding to one of their favorite ingredients.

Educating with icons

Because we knew the target customer for this item might be a less experienced cook wanting to explore new flavors we wanted to give hints and educate on the packaging. To accomplish this we created a “Great with…” icon set for each flavor giving cues for which ingredient to use with each sauce. The icons need to be read quickly and easily from the shelf, so we intentionally designed them to be very simple and recognizable.

1_tfm_simmer-sauces_single-project_image

Color story

Bold colors help the Simmer Sauces stand out on the shelf and grab shoppers attention. The colors were inspired by the different flavors; orange is roasted garlic, red chipotle adobo, and green is mojo verde. It was important to create a family feel to the three sauces, but also creates a strong identity so each can stand on their own.

Do you have a simmer sauce (or any product) and need a strategic partner to help? We’re here for you.

LET'S CHAT

April 19, 2018 In Business, Business - Design/Art, Observation, Opinion, Packaging, Spotlight, Travel, Trend Spotting

Our insights from this year’s Expo West | Color Stories

About a month ago we attended Expo West in Anaheim to walk the many aisles and see innovative & inspiring products. The following posts run through our insights and finds we’re excited to share.

Expo West is one of the largest, if not the largest, trade show for the natural products industry. With over 3000 exhibitors and estimates of 80,000 – 100,000 attendees it can be an overwhelming and claustrophobic experience – but it can also be very helpful and inspiring.

We went this year and spent 3 days soaking up all the emerging trends, innovative brands, and inspiring entrepreneurs who move the needle for the industry. We’re excited to share our insights and discoveries with you below.

Color Stories

Color plays a huge role in the decision to buy a product, so it’s no surprise we’re seeing bold, bright colors on a lot of the products featured at Expo West. Here’s some of our favorites:

UnReal makes yummy, guilt free riffs on traditional snacks like M&M’s. The candy space is very colorful, and UnReal does an amazing job creating a billboard of bold bright colors with striking design to complement. In a world of bubbly letters and swooshy effects, UnReal takes a different design stance, just like their products.

sunswell_ButtermilkBlog_New-Images_Tall---Wide

Sun & Swell Foods is on the other end of the spectrum. Soft, warm subtle colors that evoke their name and origin in Southern California. These colors feel very natural and let your eyes rest when you see them on a shelf of loud, bold snack & energy products.

serenity_ButtermilkBlog_New-Images_Tall---Wide

Serenity Kids Baby Food takes the high road with their design and color choices instead of falling into the usual traps of baby food design – cartoony, bubbly silly design with bright, garish colors. We love the sophisticated and understated color choices and these will absolutely standout amongst other baby food brands.

thunderbird_ButtermilkBlog_New-Images_Tall---Wide

Thunderbird Bars was by far our favorite color story. They do a great job of picking up queues from the natural energy bar space utilising warm earthy textures and then take a complete 180 and throw in a bold neon green. Or they embrace their origins and throw a bold bright Texas flag across the packaging. Each bar has a different vibe and feel, but the thunderbird shape is always consistent.

Enjoy our other stories from 2018 Expo West:

Our Favorite Finds

Sustainable Innovation

Special Printing Effects

September 13, 2017 In Behind the Scenes, Business, Business - Design/Art, Coffee, Design, Ideas, Packaging, Spotlight, Uncategorized

The Bird & the Brew: Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters Case Study

Occasionally we’ll share an in depth look into our work we do for clients. For our first post we’ll shed light on the packaging and logo redesign for the Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters.

Starting from Scratch

Our work with Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters actually started with an exploration into redesigning their packaging. But as we talked with Ramsey Smith, President & Co-Founder, we figured out that before we could work on packaging, we needed to create a new logo.

After researching ways to represent their unique island setting without clichés, we landed on the simple line art illustration of the Bananaquit, a common bird found all over the Virgin Islands. After digging deeper we learned that it also belongs to the Tanager family of birds, an important part of the coffee plant ecosystem.

Our first goal for the new logo is to be more relevant to the heart and soul of the brand and its unique location. Our second goal is to create something that can compete with the highly competitive current coffee category leaders. We felt the old logo was too limiting visually and typographically. The new logo features a unique and ownable typeface and iconic mark that is recognizable enough to appear on various materials, with or without the wordmark.

It’s in the Bag

As we finalized the logo we started working with the whole team at Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters to start brainstorming new packaging options. We had a few objectives we had to keep in mind:

must be sustainable & compostable
needs to be relevant
should to perform well on the production line.

We kept all of these in mind as we worked in the studio and on-site with the team prototyping options. We explored different layouts, materials, and structures as we honed in on the solution that worked best.

New Packaging

Our final packaging solution for Virgin Islands features a simple kraft square bottom gusseted coffee bag with a clean but dramatic narrow and long label that wraps around the front, top, and back of the bag – effectively sealing the bag. Three different sizes were created to accommodate the variations in product weights, all while keeping the look consistent.

The new packaging managed to preserve the brand’s hand-crafted feel but gave it a more sophisticated and eye-catching feel. VICR’s coffee is sold on crowded island grocery store shelves so we wanted to create a design that could stand out just about anywhere. The light label stock against the brown kraft bag creates engaging contrast, and the pop of yellow from the bananquit creates even more interest.

How Buttermilk made it better

“Since we launched the new logo and Packaging we’ve continued an 80% growth year over year.

The new logo allowed us the flexibility to use it across the board in many mediums for customers signage, our merchandising and also expand our reach into creating our own brand identity.

The packaging was a large scale undertaking that increased our retail sales and opportunities well into the 100% year over year mark. Packaging is a forever changing and very competitive market and having the ready to go support from Andy and Buttermilk allows us to stay ahead of the game.”

– RAMSEY SMITH, President & Co-Founder, VIRGIN ISLANDS COFFEE ROASTERS

Click here to view our project page for Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters.

August 2, 2017 In Behind the Scenes, Business, Business - Design/Art, Design, Ideas, Observation, Packaging, Spotlight, Travel, Trend Spotting, Uncategorized

Our insights from this year’s Summer Fancy Food Show in NYC | Trend 3: Revolutionary Redesigns

About a month ago we headed up to the Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show to walk the many aisles and see the best & brightest amongst specialty food and beverage. The Following posts run through our insights we’re excited to share.

Trend 3. Revolutionary Redesigns

Redesigns are big and scary undertakings but when brands decide to refresh it can pay off with better relevance with new customers and an opportunity to freshen up a potentially stagnant brand. We noticed a few big brands going through facelifts and redesigns.

Morris Kitchen:
Morris Kitchen threw us for a loop (in the best way) with their sleek, simple, illustration pattern driven redesign. We’ve always loved Morris Kitchen for their unique take on cocktail mixers and tasty concoctions like Tomato Beet and Citrus Agave. Their old design felt homemade and simple, which fit with the brand’s positioning- but the design update feels fresh and contemporary and will definitely stand out on the shelf. The simplified treatment of the ingredients in each label drives home the fact that there’s only the best inside.

Roland Foods:
Heirloom brand Roland Foods keeps their heritage with a simplified treatment for their wordmark and refreshed packaging design. We love that they were able to simplify the logo but keep the wordmark in place. The new mark will be more flexible across the brand and could introduce Roland to new customers. They really upped their packaging design game as well with interesting photography work adorning their canned goods and amazing bold colors for their sardines, just to highlight a few.

And not a full redesign…

Bob’s Red Mill:
but we appreciated this new take on presentation within their brand from Bob’s Red Mill for their line of Muesli. We’re used to seeing Bob’s Red Mill products in clear sealed bags with a label and Bob’s smiling face. However those bags aren’t the easiest to work with once opened – plus we felt like there’s a ton of opportunity there for a design refresh. So we were excited to spot this particular update to both the bag and the design for their Muesli. Still staying true to their original look and feel with Bob’s likeness but pulling in new typography with a vintage feel, plus the use of banners as containers for content helps organize the front panel. And the scroll work and filigree elements add a nice homespun touch, reinforces the brands core values.

Read our Trend #1 Post

Read our Trend #2 Post

June 1, 2016 In Art, Behind the Scenes, Business, Business - Design/Art, Design, General, Ideas, Observation, Opinion, Spotlight, Travel

Unpacking after 99U: Part 2

In our Part 1 post distilling our experience during the 99U Conference, we shared what we encountered around the city and some of the interesting things we saw. Part 2 is all about our conference takeaways.

Day 1

Studio Tour: Verdes

We started the first full day of the conference at a great little coffee shop called The Jolly Goat on our way to a studio tour with Verdes, a small offshoot of the larger studio Mother NY. The folks from Verdes shared with us how to create a common language around expressing our ideas to clients and helpful tools for facilitating the discussion. A super useful topic and content and a great start to the conference.

Conference Sessions:

We made our way back from Verdes down in Hell’s Kitchen to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center to start the general sessions.

Session 1: Ryan Carson, Treehouse

Ryan Carson shared with us a bit about his unique management and company policies (he doesn’t have any managers and they encourage lots of balance) – all of which came from his realization that we really don’t have very long on this earth so we need to spend it doing important things with the most important people in our lives. Ryan had us imagine who we want at our funeral and what we’d want them to say about us. From there we create a “Personal Mission Statement” outlining our different roles (father, business owner, son, husband, etc.) and check in on our mission statement every week and make sure our lives are still on track.

Session 2: Kristy Tilman, Society of Grownups

Kristy Tilman, in addition to having beautiful and inspiring design work, talked about not waiting to be invited to the table – to just invite yourself. She shared her own experiences where she created her own opportunity based on what she felt was needed in the world and built success around it. This is such an important idea to keep in mind: Don’t wait to be invited! Other folks out there aren’t going to wait for you and the most successful people create their own opportunity.

Session 3: Jason Fried, Basecamp

I was very excited to hear from Jason Fried who created Basecamp. Jason talked about “creative destruction” and really stepping out of your comfort zone, habits, and processes to discover new solutions. He’s challenged his teams with weeklong projects, which keeps everyone sharp but also gets the client to pay faster for example. Creating seasonal change is also important – for instance work 4 days a week in the summer and go back to 5 days in the fall. When the changes come you are refreshed and can look at everything in a different way.

Session 4: Tristan Walker, Bevel

Tristin Walker created a men’s grooming product that rethinks everything we’ve grown used to. His products are simple and refined, both visually and functionally. I mainly was inspired by his company, Bevel’s, packaging design.

Master Class: Scott Belsky, founder of Behance

Scott Belsky spoke about the journey in-between and how to keep projects alive and thriving through every cycle. Scott talked about being mission centric and medium agnostic and really focusing on the core of the project, not letting the medium drive the solution. The playbook changes over the lifespan of the project so what worked at the beginning wont work in the middle or the end so we should be aware and course correct when we need to. He discussed why projects lag in the middle – hint – it’s in our human nature! We learned to make sure we focus on new users as well as existing ones and to step out of our assumptions and step into the shoes of someone who has never interacted with our product or project.

Day 2

Day 2 started with a rainy walk to a cool little event space called Lightbox to hear Brennan Dunn discuss how to optimize our businesses. I popped in a great little coffee shop called Rex Coffee and had some yummy Counter Culture coffee and a tasty Egg & Cheese on Brioche.

Offsite: Brennan Dunn, Double Your Freelancing

This was probably the most helpful and actionable sessions of the whole conference. Brennan walked us through what makes freelancers successful, things such as mindset and knowing that you are equal to you client counterparts, not just a “vendor.” He discussed really easy ways to qualify new clients and how to provide a ton more value to existing clients. We learned about tips and techniques to help uncover the true business problem behind design projects and to become an investment for our clients, and not just an expense.

Conference Sessions:

Session 1: Dan Mall, Superfriendly

Dan Mall walked us through why and how he uses an apprenticeship model at his design studio. This was such an interesting and inspiring talk and I will be exploring ways to create something similar at Buttermilk. The most fascinating thing about Dan’s apprentice program – he only spend 30 total non-billable hours working with the apprentice over the span of the 9 month program. The rest of the hours were spent with self directed instruction by the apprentice or actual billable time on real life design projects. So something that seemed way out of reach sounds very doable for any business owner.

Session 2: Cap Watkins, BuzzFeed

My main takeaway from Cap Watkins was how he started to develop “Designer Principals” at BuzzFeed and those turned into “Leadership principals” because he discovered that really it all boils down to the same thing, no matter what your job or discipline is. He also talked about designing everything, not just design projects and to treat organizations and clients as user experience problems – a very interesting point of view.

Session 3: Yuko Shimizu

Yuko is an incredible illustrator that decided to go into the field later in life. She discussed setting goals really high and to take one small risk everyday. She also shared a lot of work and some of the stories behind it. Very inspirational.

Keynote: Tobias Frere-Jones

Tobias Frere-Jones closed the conference with a discussion about how he arrived at type design and walked us through the details and nuances of redesigning a font to be used in the stock pages of the Wall Street Journal. What I learned is that projects can always use a bit more adjusting and work before they are completely finished, but to also step away from projects for a little while too so you can return to them with fresh eyes.

Closing Party

What’s a great conference without a killer party and 99U was no exception. The venue was incredible – the vestibule of the MOMA and the music was provided by DJ Windows 98 (aka Win Butler from Arcade Fire). I had to keep pinching myself – here I was in this iconic space listening to an iconic artist with all these inspirational folks I’ve spent the last couple of days with. It was such an incredible time.

Parting Thoughts

99U was an awesome experience I will definitely consider attending again next year. I was amazed at how few traditional “designers” i encountered and the wide array of disciplines and people I learned about and met. The speakers and sessions were so varied and everything I learned makes me look at projects and my own work in a completely different way – something I think is invaluable. What makes me even more excited is all the new value and knowledge I get to share with my clients helping them solve their business problems and making them even more successful!

June 8, 2015 In Behind the Scenes, Business, Business - Design/Art, Design, General, Ideas, Observation, Opinion, Spotlight

Welcome to our new site!

Its been a long hard road but we finally have arrived at our destination and have a redesigned site! It took a lot of time, energy, and effort from not only us but helpful friends in the community. Over the next few posts we’ll share insights into the redesign process, what’s new on the site, spotlights on our collaborators, and other bits of knowledge we’ve gained on this journey. We want to share all of this because we feel like it will be helpful for folks thinking about heading down the redesign road.

Below are the sections we’ll be covering over the next few weeks:

Part 1: A little context & background: Why?

Part 2: The process behind the redesign

Part 3: The importance of assembling a good team

Part 4: Spotlight: Our developer and domain host

Part 5: Spotlight: The importance of amazing photography

Part 6: Learnings

As you can see we’ve got a lot of ground to cover but we’re excited to share this experience with you. Our blog is a weekly post so look out for new posts every Monday morning.

Enjoy!

June 23, 2014 In Design, General, Ideas, Opinion, Spotlight

Lowes Foods Redesign

At the risk of sounding hypocritical I’d like to discuss a logo redesign that was just unveiled. The redesign I’ll be digging into is for one of our local hometown grocery stores: Lowes Foods.

Growing up about 30 minutes west of where Lowes Foods started I was familiar with this brand early on, but I was always confused about the name. Are they connected to Lowes Hardware? Owned by the same people? After all Lowes the hardware store is also headquartered in NC but down in Charlotte. We never really shopped at Lowes Foods though when I was little so it wasn’t until I moved back to the area after being away that I really checked out the grocery store.

My first impression of Lowes was low end, basic grocery store. I had just left Florida, land of Publix, where I fell head over heals in love with that wonderful store “where shopping is a pleasure.” So my grocery store bar was set very high and Lowes just didn’t do it for me. At that time I felt like they did not have a solid and clear statement to the shopper about who they are and what they stood for. They were, you know… just a regular grocery store.

Over the years I’ve only dabbled with shopping at Lowes. Part because its not convenient for me personally, part because I just don’t like the place. I can count the number of times I’ve shopped at Lowes over the last 7 years on my two hands.

So you can imagine my absolute shock when I noticed earlier this past week that they had redesigned their logo- and it was pretty amazing. Retro inspired cool, the new script logo looks great. Feels historic but fresh at the same time. Has a great energy and is light years ahead of the old mark.

Following the logo redesign I went over to their website and, to my delight, saw they had redesigned that as well. The visual language they’ve set up is consistent, interesting, and with enough variety to keep things engaging.

My favorite parts of the whole redesign is what Lowes calls their “Originals.” These are basically “stores-within-the-store”. Whole Foods is famous for these — the beer bar that will fill your growler up while you sip on a pint, the BBQ shack right down the aisle from canned goods. But this concept at Lowes Foods? Who’d a thunk? The design of each “Original” is unique but consistent and contributes to the overall feeling of what Lowes is putting forth. The concepts are very cool- a craft beer bar, a sausage makery, a fried chicken joint, and a couple other community focused ones that holistically make Lowes feel like more than “just” a grocery store.

Images via Lowesfoods.com

For me, “The Beer Den” tops my list. I’m digging the overall rustic, modern, hand crafted feel of the space as well as the bold type and illustrations used. The printed growlers add a nice touch of specialty and reinforce Lowes’ new position as craft beer experts. Just look at that bear art — bad ass!

Image via Lowesfoods.com

I’ve yet to step foot in a newly redesigned Lowes. All of my conclusions have been drawn purely based on the digital work put out there by Lowes and their agency of record, The Variable. So will it all fall apart in the store? I’ll be very interested to see when I plan my next visit. What I’m even more curious about is what will these bold statements do for Lowes’ business? My hope is it works out for them. They’ve embraced design as an important factor to move the needle and as a designer I want badly for that to work out for them — if it does, other companies will take notice and the success story will raise our industry. Fingers crossed.

Kudos to the in-house team at Lowes Foods and the team at The Variable for doing such an amazing job on the redesign and on all the other work needed to make it sing.