Five Creative Teams To Redesign Five Products for Judging by Our Readers

by M. Grace Maselli

Packaging and its constructs—the inventiveness of the two- and three-dimensional meld of color, composition, and practicality, among other design elements—is nothing if not a telling reflection of popular culture, consumer buying habits, and the needs of everyone from infants to octogenarians.

In this issue, we proudly announce the Package Design Makeover Challenge, to be continued over the course of the next two issues. The competition starts here with profiles of the Makeover Challenge participants: Anthem Worldwide, Mayr-Melnhof Packaging, Paragraph Inc., Webb Scarlett de Vlam, and the collegiate design team from the Packaging Design Department at Fashion Institute of Technology. Each participant will vie for our the approval
of our readers in a contest that hinges on your votes.

Currently underway is the selection of a small consumer goods company that will submit five of its products for a complete design makeover by each of the teams. The results of the makeovers will be showcased in our July/August issue, which will be packed with before-and-after photos and written accounts of each contestant’s efforts.

Readers of Package Design then will be asked to cast their ballots online, where embedded 3D samples will bring each of the redesigns to life. Online voting begins with the receipt of July/August and ends on August 15.

Based on the tally of your choices, we will proudly display the winners on the cover of our September/October issue, complete with detailed editorial coverage. The redesign team receiving the largest number of votes will be honored with the contribution of a $5,000 student scholarship in its name to FIT’s Packaging Design Department.

So hats off to our participants, and heads up to our judges—you, the readers of Package Design—in this extraordinary celebration of package design creativity!

Anthem Worldwide, San Francisco, Calif.

If you were a prospective client of Anthem Worldwide in San Francisco, Calif., the strategic brand design arm of Schawk Inc., Ted Leonhardt, Anthem Worldwide’s president, would tell you he could take care of all your business needs from “idea to aisle.”

Anthem: Ron Vandenberg (top) and Chris Plewes (bottom)

With confidence and a proven track record, Leonhardt says, Anthem can tell prospective clients, “If you’re launching or revitalizing a new brand or product, we can assist you from initial idea to delivery, on time, at a fixed price, and with expected quality. We believe the more efficient the system of creating and delivering a package, the more effective the brand.”

Anthem’s client profile fits well with what Leonhardt describes as the company’s “extremely narrow” offering to consumer products companies and mass retailers, some with a worldwide reach, others with a national and local market presence. With offices in Singapore, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Chicago, Toronto, New York City, and Hackettstown, N. J., Anthem serves a client roster of household names that includes Nestlé, Campbell’s, Wal-Mart, and General Mills. To serve clients’ comprehensive needs, Leonhardt says, “we begin with classic conceptual development and consumer insights and work all the way through the process of prepress, press management, and delivery.”

Revenue at Anthem is growing by 24 percent annually, Leonhardt says. The company has 125 employees, a number that Leonhardt expects to double this year. He attributes the success to Anthem’s and Schawk’s efficient system of design creation and delivery. Based in Chicago, Schawk Inc. is a supplier of digitized, high-resolution color graphics, brand consulting and design services, and digital workflow solutions to the food, beverage, consumer products packaging, point of sale, and advertising markets.
“Today we have a much more pragmatic buyer of creative services,” Leonhardt says. Global clients respond to a smart, focused, systematic approach that also reduces their design packaging costs.

To meet the challenge of the Package Design makeover competition, Anthem has assigned the task to two experts in offices that are 3,000 miles apart. One half of the team, Chris Plewes, is the senior creative director and managing director of Anthem’s Toronto office. The other half, Ron Vandenberg, is the creative director of Anthem Worldwide and Anthem San Francisco, where his office is located. “We picked this team because it illustrates the cooperative nature of our business. It’ll be fun for both offices to work together,” Leonhardt says.

Leonhardt say he thinks that the competition is a “wonderful” idea because “it gives readers a chance to see real differences between the firms and to give them a broader perspective on the industry.”

Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York, N.Y.

The Fashion Institute of Technology’s Packaging Design Department offers the only Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Packaging Design, says Marianne Klimchuk, the department’s Associate Chairperson.

Started in 1981, the department graduates 25 highly qualified students each year. “Our students are incredibly desirable because of the intensive academic curriculum and the high department standards,” Klimchuk explains. “They have unique skill sets, and both the corporations and the brand design firms that hire them know our graduates can come in and take on any design assignment.”

The Fashion Institute of Technology Packaging Design Department Student Design Team: (left to right) Gina Taha, Jason Lombardo, Natalie Wedeking, Carlo DiRusso, Carla Velasco.

Moreover, she says of the students’ rigorous training, “from a design standpoint they have learned how to read a marketing brief and translate the written information into the visual communication of the personality of a brand.” This, she says, is accomplished with a facility for structural materials, color, imagery, typography, and other design elements. Their unique education also provides them with a background in structural design, computer technology, printing, packaging materials and production, all of which are applied to packaging design for industries that include but are not limited to food, beverage, cosmetics, fragrances, and personal care.

Uniquely, all students are taught by professionals in the packaging design industry, Klimchuk notes. “Because of our location, alumni, and industry contact, we have design directors and business leaders coming in to teach and offer critiques on a regular basis. We have more internship sponsors than we have interns to fill the slots,” she says, adding that “when students go out to internships, many of them are given assignments that go directly to market. Our students provide real value to their employers or internship sponsors.”

“Our students’ internships routinely lead to full-time jobs. We are wonderfully connected,” Klimchuk boasts. She says that current employers of FIT Packaging Design alumni include Fisher Price, Godiva, Colgate Palmolive, Avon, Kraft, Pepsi, Estee Lauder, and Hasbro, and many of the top brand design firms.

“The FIT student design team of two seniors and three juniors for the Package Design makeover competition is approaching the challenge as an integrated group of professional designers,” Klimchuk says. “The students were selected by their professors not only because they are strong representatives of their respective classes, she says, “but also because we knew that each individual would work well within a group and bring a unique perspective to the team, raising the bar on the final outcome.”

“The knowledge base we give to students teaches them how to communicate the essence of a broader visual idea,” Klimchuk points out. At its core, she believes, the design process speaks to emotion and connects to cultural values.

Mayr-Melnhof Packaging, Vienna, Austria

A public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Mayr-Melnhof Packaging is a folding carton manufacturer with headquarters in Vienna, Austria. The organization operates 15 European locations including those in Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the UK.

According to Andreas Blaschke, chief operating officer, the company lists 2,700 employees on its roster, runs eight paperboard mills that produce folding box board, and operates 22 carton plants for converting. As European market leaders in the manufacture and design of cartons, boxes, folding cartons, and “ready packages,” Blaschke says the organization supplies major multinational companies such as Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Kimberly Clark, Lindt, Phillip Morris, and many others. In addition to general packaging, the company’s portfolio includes packaging for food, confectionery, detergents, pharmaceuticals, and pet food.

The PacProject Design Team: Ole Bolling (Partner); Susanne Kastl (Designer); Jana Sasse (Designer); Volker Muche (Consultant); Armin Kriele (Consultant); Sascha Krause (Consultant); Olaf Starken (Managing Partner)

“We are also running PacProject, part of our Design and Innovation group,” Blaschke notes. PacProject, the firm’s design arm, focuses not only on design feasibility but also on structure, technology, and all other things critical to successful package design.

The company has complete design and prepress capability as well as digital printing equipment. “If necessary, we can assemble a dummy within 12 hours representing a totally new design with new color and a new structure,” Blaschke comments.

The design team dedicated for the Package Design makeover competition is headed by Olaf Starken, managing director of PacProject, and Ernst Krottendorfer, Mayr-Melnhof Packaging’s director of sales and marketing.
Blaschke believes one of the company’s chief strengths is its skill at executing and coordinating “very complex promotional work, particularly in Europe with 15 different countries, languages, and supply plants on our side.” In 2003 Mayr-Melnhof Packaging received Europe’s Carton of the Year Award in the “Overall” category.

Paragraph Inc., Philadelphia, Pa.

Paragraph Inc., an integrated marketing communications firm in Philadelphia, Pa., has a wide-ranging forte in creating branding and marketing campaigns. “Our approach is about holistic strategic planning,” remarks Bob Aretz, principle and creative director. “We not only help clients find their internal and external voices, we help them solve operational and business challenges, too.”

Front: Damon Shields, Graphic Designer. Middle: Bob Aretz, Principal, Creative Director; Karyn Jimenez, Graphic Designer; Michele Morita, Art Director; J.T. Harding, Client Services Director. Back: Dean Kline, Copy Director; Rob Brockman, Production Manager.

Within this framework Paragraph and its team of 12 professionals including account managers and design, copy, production, and interactive programming professionals execute entire promotional efforts to create brand identities, package design, graphic systems, Web site content and management, e-mail campaigns, tradeshow communications, and more.

No matter the size of the client or the scope of the client’s marketing desires, skill, intuition, and a clear understanding of objectives first inform the Paragraph team and identify the direction it takes. “Before we ever put pen to paper and get the creative juices flowing, we do a lot of information gathering,” Aretz says. About package redesign in particular, he offers, “Each client is a little different. When we’re working on a packaging project, we need to understand who our client is and how they want that package to speak to the consumer.”

Some of Paragraph’s key clients include Aramark, The Hartford - Group Benefits, Pfizer, Covalent Group, National Adoption Center, and Foster’s Urban Homeware & Gourmet Cookware.

Besides Aretz, the Paragraph group assembled to work on Package Design’s makeover competition includes J.T. Harding, client service director; Dean Kline, copy director; Michele Morita, art director; Karyn Jimenez and Damon Shields, graphic designers; and Rob Brockman, production manager.

Aretz’s zeal for the contest is clear. “Internally it’ll keep us excited and highly motivated to work on a project with this type of creative potential. It will also raise awareness of who Paragraph is, and that’s a really good thing.”

Webb Scarlett deVlam, Chicago, Ill.

Webb Scarlett deVlam, a brand and packaging design firm founded by Ian Webb, Felix Scarlett and Ronald deVlam, operates from offices in London, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The company says that its work on brands like Pringles, Secret, Olay, Gillette and Chivas Regal demonstrates its ability to reconcile the strategic, long-term view with predictive consumer insight: in other words, to determine how a brand must evolve to capture untapped consumer needs.

The Webb Scarlett de Vlam team, from left: Stacy Thomas, Industrial Designer; Ronald de Vlam, Partner; Emily Siegler, Industrial Designer; Jessica Lissner, Graphic Designer; Phillip Karnezis, Senior Designer; Richard Barkaway, Creative Director; Karl Bakker, Senior Industrial Designer

Great brands should excite and motivate consumers. They perform more than a functional task,” says Ronald deVlam. “We believe in creating great brands that consumers bond with emotionally. The deeper the emotional content, the more possessive and protective consumers become of their relationship with that brand.”

However, notes deVlam, creativity and innovative design are valueless if a product cannot be manufactured, distributed, and sold within the commercial constraints of fiercely competitive markets. “Our designs succeed because they match consumer desire with real world commercial performance,” he says. “Our clients hit their launch deadlines, their cost targets, and their competition.”

The company relies on a versatile team of specialists in brand and graphic communication, 3D innovation for industrial design, and retailing. The design process starts, deVlam says, with understanding the consumer’s emotional and rational needs and “diagnosing the brand’s aspirations with feasible and realistic design criteria.” The company’s turnkey service can take the design all the way from concept to prepress or production prototypes.

“Clients stay with Webb Scarlett deVlam because we are high on service, passionate about good design, and willing to challenge the hierarchy to achieve it,” deVlam says. He claims that the company’s emphasis on speed-to-market and attention to detail have enabled it to achieve a 97 percent success rate of 30 to 35 launched projects per year.