Fresh from the Kitchens of the Renowned Daylesford Lake House
Over the past year-or-so we’ve been co-creating with Lake House Founder and food guru Alla Wolf-Tasker and her daughter, Lake House marketer Larissa Wolf-Tasker, cooking-up a tasty brand, name and packaging design for their new range of produce.

As Alla says, “There has always been a Wolf in our kitchen. My Russian parents were both great cooks and our kitchen was always the heart of the home. Preserving the bounty from our garden and orchard was a seasonal occupation. Jars of dill tomatoes and cucumbers, pickled mushrooms and sauerkraut were always in abundance, and pots of jam opened in the depth of winter reminded us of sunny days. When friends visited they were fed, regardless of the time of day. Those special memories inspired my becoming a chef and restaurateur and in 1984 we opened the Lake House in Daylesford. I’ve had the good fortune to share our place with so many guests over the years and to welcome them to our table. Now we’re delighted to have selection of favourite recipes to enjoy at home. As we say “Priatnogo appetita”… enjoy!”

Initially developing the brand proposition for the range as well as the brand architecture establishing the optimum relationship with both Alla’s personal brand and that of the iconic Daylesford Lake House, we then developed the name; ‘A Wolf in the Kitchen’. As brand names go, this one combines unique elements of Alla’s surname, as well as the sense of home cooked and hand made preserves. The brand positioning line of ‘Alla Wolf-Tasker Produce’ is locked-up with the brand name allowing for broader brand extensions into the future.

The packaging design features a beautiful water colour illustration by New York-based, Australian designer/illustrator Anna Roszko. The illustration forms the basis of the packaging design, combining the literal cues of a wolf and a bountiful fruit/produce tree with a sense of hand crafted cooking, and seasonal, windfall produce. Truly Deeply Creative Director, David Ansett explains; “We wished to not only capture a sense of Alla and her Russian heritage, but also a sense of home cooked preserves, made from whatever seasonal produce the garden had provided. This sense of authenticity is critical both to Alla and also to her new brand”.

The colour-way of the feature illustration shifts to match each conserve variety, providing a soft, seasonal palette for the range of SKUs.

If you have a brand that could use some truly outstanding brand positioning, brand naming or packaging design, why not give us a call – we’d love to chat with you about how we can help position you for success.

The original packaging design has been tweaked by others at the production stage (see below) so that it varies slightly from the intent. A Wolf in the Kitchen is available for sale at Wombat Hill House Daylesford, Lake House and selected specialty stores. For wholesale enquiries contact larissa@lakehouse.com.au

Creating a new brand through re-packaging

The re-positioning of the Nutshack brand included the exploration of transforming their product range from an impulse commodity snack, to a branded, valued food choice. Nutshack had been selling mixes of fruit and nuts by the gram through their franchised retail stores for some time, but the approach of sale-by-weight continued to under perform. By creating a brand for the selection of mixes, and a series of sub-branded SKUs, in two ‘fresh pre-packed’ sizes, we enabled Nutshack to leverage the new through in-store, visual merchandising and point of sale promotion, dramatically increasing sales of their high margin staple product overnight.

Our work on the Nutshack Mixes brand included:
• Brand and Product Naming
• Brand Identity and Packaging Design

If you’d like to talk to us about transforming your run of the mill product lines into high margin brands, why not give us a call, we’d love to add some punch to your product brands and packaging.
Why not drop us an email or give us a call.

Spudbar was founded in Melbourne in 2000, born out of a frustration at the lack of a healthy, great tasting, healthy feed that was quick, convenient and value for money. It has been on a mission from day one, to create a new category of food offer that fuses natural goodness and big flavours into the nutrient rich gem that is the steaming baked spud. The potential of the brand was clear, the question was how to realise that great potential by taking the Spudbar brand to the next level.

When we began working with Spudbar they had 9 stores around Australia and was struggling to own a space in the market compelling enough to grow the business to the next level.

We were engaged to give Spudbar a complete brand overhaul. We conducted a brand audit to look at the Spudbar brand from the inside out and a comprehensive competition and market review to look at the brand from the outside in. The more we immersed ourselves in the brand the more it became apparent that Spudbar could greatly benefit from a new direction. A direction that was truly grounded in the humble potato, and more deeply connected with a market need.

What Spudbar needed most was a reason for being and that had to come from the brand up. To achieve this we immersed ourselves in their market segment, generated some clear qualitative market insights from customers, ex-customers and non-customers, and led a brand strategy re-think to provide a clear vision for where the brand and its offer could most potently be positioned for success in the market.

We developed the Spudbar brand charter, a roadmap defining how the brand needed to act, feel, speak and look to deliver a 360 degree experience that delivered on the newly defined brand proposition. We defined the drivers for the brand strategy as Natural Goodness, Surprisingly Delicious, Local Groove, Sassy and Easy. And we identified Spudbar’s brand personality as Real, Lively, Imaginative, Passionate and Engaging. These values and personality attributes were the driving force behind building the new look and feel. Spudbar’s brand image had to richly and evocatively reflect the brand’s proposition of local, authentic and a purveyor of potato heritage.

The key to developing the Spudbar brand identity was unlocking the cues of the visual language of one-off local cafes. Whilst these cafes seem disparate and highly individual, when explored as a group there are many similarities in the way they present themselves to market, often driven by a limited budget. The lack of polished design is a part of what identifies and differentiates these local, one-off cafes and restaurants. An example is their menus, which are often hand written on blackboards, or tiles or paper stuck to the wall, they rarely include photographs of the food. By unlocking the code of visual language for these high-loyalty, non-franchise food businesses, we developed the Spudbar brand identity to work in a similar, non-cookie cutter manner.

The brand identity design solution included two defining elements that work together to drive the brand experience from a visual perspective. The first is to identify each Spudbar by its location, we changed the organisational mind-set from owning multiple stores, to having local unique store in multiple locations. The stores changed from being called ‘Spudbar’, to ‘Richmond Spudbar’ or ‘Hawthorn Spudbar’, with a new emphasis on the local identifier. The second defining element was the integration of local street art into the store environment. The brand identity system we developed integrated the art work of a well known and very talented Melbourne paste-up artist. For each store a signature piece of art is created, that piece is ‘pasted’ to a prominent wall in-store and becomes a feature of the experience. The greater brand identity also incorporates a suite of ‘spud inspired’ illustrations from the same artist.

The most defining visual elements of the brands identity are hand-made from the lino-print Spudbar brandmarks, the store signage and interiors, the clipboard menus and a handcrafted typeface, reflecting the D.I.Y nature of local cafes.

In designing the complete brand experience for Spudbar we have developed a suite of elements including, corporate stationary, takeaway packaging, in-store and take home menus, uniforms, internal and external signage, website, marketing collateral, in-store environments, furniture selection, Art Direction of artwork and photography and typography.

“The brand definition work and brand identity design Truly Deeply developed for our Spudbar chain of healthy food stores has blown the lid on the potential for our business. We believe what was previously a nine store franchise now has the market positioning, store design and brand image to expand into a significant national network. As a return on business investment I can’t rate the brand work Truly Deeply produce more highly.”

Ant Morrel
Spudbar Owner & National Director of Marketing & Sales

Spudbar recently opened their first two branded and re-designed stores in Richmond and Hawthorn two inner suburbs of Melbourne and the results is a ‘dialled-up’ brand experience on all levels. Spudbar has created a space that is inviting and comfortable, a place for locals and a place that is uniquely on-brand.

The strength and longterm equity of the Spudbar brand will be driven by the solid strategic framework that has been developed. The strategic framework provides the backbone for the majority of decisions the business will make day-to-day.

Strategy is often seen as a separate discipline to design. For the past 10 years we have focused on the integration of strategy and design to deliver highly unique and effective brand experiences. Spudbar demonstrates how these brand disciplines interweave to create a rich brand experience with layers of meaning and personality, that connect with the market in a powerful way.

Since the launch sales have increased by 20% in month on month, store on store comparison and continue to grow.

We would urge you to go down to the Richmond Spudbar on Swan St or the Hawthorn Spudbar on Glenferrie Rd and soak up the atmosphere.

If you would like to know more about how combining brand strategy and design can take your brand to a new level, give us a call and organise a lunch date at one of the Spudbar store, because the proof is in the Spuds.

Gelati Sky is a boutique, premium gelati range. The story of Gelati Sky has a strong personality driven by Gelati Sky founder Paul Scalisi’s memories of growing up in Rome, eating gelati – ‘a world where every moment seemed frozen in an amazing sensory assault and every cloud in the sky made you feel it was about to rain gelato’. We were looking for something that was strikingly unique, represented his story and would create conversation. The communication platform of ‘it’s what dreams taste like’ was derived out of the brand strategy definition for Gelati Sky conducted by Brand DNA.

The goal was to express these feelings through the package and the tastes through the flavors. The concept that we came up with was born out of these ideas. We combined the imagery of Italy with objects that looked like the flavor to create a unique, organic and scrumptious shape for each flavor. The packaging looks like it is part of memories and dreams from Italy.

Gelati Sky started as a boutique Gelati range servicing restaurants and specialist food shops. The packaging was the strongest step to building a brand consumer could connect with. As small ultra premium brand, the package needed to take on a more delicate personality than the bigger, more established companies. The package needed to not only reflect the personality and story but also to look different while still maintaining premium feel. The taste of the Gelati is simply amazing and we knew that if we developed a rich, beautiful label, one that would get buyers and customers excited it would be very successful.

“Every presentation we have done when I pull the containers out of the box the first word is WOW! Then they taste the product and they say WOW again! I think we got a winner.”

Paul Scalisi
Managing Director & Gelati Chef
Gelati Sky

Client: Gelati Sky
Brand identity, brand strategy and packaging for retail gelati brand Gelati Sky.

360° Property Group is a full-service residential project development sales agency with more than 30 years of accumulated experience with Australia’s largest public and private companies. We were approached by 360° to design a one off sales and marketing proposal/pitch that would ‘blow the pants off’ their potential client and win them this highly prestigious project. We designed a cloth-bound book with black gloss embossed logo on the cover.

The book was bound using Chicago screws and housed within an even larger box which was also cloth covered. The information and layout design of the book leveraged the visual cues of luxury architecture to position 360˚ as understanding the mind-space required to effectively understand the project and present the requisite aspirational communications campaign to the market.  The overall piece reflected the design credentials, style and confidence of the property development itself and played a vital role in winning our client the project.

Engaging Event Communications Design
The Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) is a global business organisation of around 8,000 owners of fast growth businesses. The Melbourne chapter runs a number of learning and social events each year for their members. When EO Melbourne held a family Easter event we were engaged to design the invitation and provide creative direction in order to make this a highly anticipated, highly attended and highly memorable event.

The event location was Herring Island, which we re-named Easter Island for the event. Herring Island is a small native bushland oasis located in the middle of some of inner Melbourne’s finest suburbs, but remains a well kept secret. Accessible only by boat, the event invitation created a sense of wonderment and discovery as the invitee engaged with the packaging and the Easter egg within to reveal a golden ticket – their pass to the island and a day of family adventure and Easter shenanigans.

The event itself included a bushland Easter egg hunt for the children who searched the bush track for chocolate billbies, koalas and of course easter eggs, as well as Easter bunny transformation, good old fashioned running races and Australian Easter storytelling.

For many events from conferences to exhibitions, creating brand communications which capture attention and engage with the audience is critical to setting the tone of the event and achieving high levels of attendance. The EO Melbourne Easter Family Day was a great success, now set to become an annual event, with EO Members providing bucket-loads of positive feedback on the imaginative and ingenious nature of the event communications and invitation.

2008 was a rocky year, the global financial crisis was on everyone lips. So, for our client christmas present we wanted a gift that would offer a little hit of hope and sweetness in tough times, and chocolate cheers everyone up.

We sourced the most stunning chocolate in the world that looked just as sublime as it tasted from our good friends at Ganashe Chocolate. We then designed the packages to reflect the premium quality of the chocolate and to inspire a cosy, peaceful moment of calm in such turbulent times.

Over the last decade or more we’ve worked-on a number of project with fashion label Hemisphere. Hemisphere are a fiercely independent mens label with and ‘everyday denim sub-brand – you can see some of the work we designed with them here. In 2006 we worked on some fabric designs for a range of their shirts, which became their best selling lines, and as a result decided a couple of years later to form a partnership to launch a new label of premium mens shirts featuring custom designed printed fabrics.

We worked in creative partnership to develop the brand name, proposition, brand definition and designed the brand identity for the label which we called Barnaby & Brown. We designed a packaging solution that was both functional – it protects the shirt, and unique with layers of discovery.

The brand experience also included swing tags designed for the first range that reflected the style of a ‘little black book’. The swing tags included information about shirt care as well as a pocket that contained a pair of collar stays.

We also designed two ranges of shirts. Our designs were screen printed onto high quality Egyptian cotton which were then made-up into several shirt designs using Hemisphere’s shirt blocks. The shirts were finished with subtle embellishments, high quality buttons , stitching and labeling.

We produced stationery and a start-up web site for the brand before the venture was nipped in the bud. From a brand perspective, it was a huge pitty for us to not see all of our fine work come to fruition. And yes, we’re still in therapy.

Client: Barnaby & Brown
Brand identity, brand strategy and packaging for fashion label Barnaby & Brown.

We often talk about the role of design in expressing different personalities for a brand. We work in the space every day, but rarely get the opportunity to explore the expression of multiple brand personalities for the one product type. We decided it was time to walk the talk and set ourselves a challenge; to develop five unique, integrated packaging strategies based upon an identical product – a range of (very delicious) natural fruit cordials.

The Challange
Working from set brand definitions, each creative was set the task to strut their skills as brand creators by developing a brand name, palette of brand visual language and packaging solution to differentiate the brand position of their product. The range of work that resulted is a rich and evocative demonstration of what can be achieved by skilled (and we think rather talented) brand creators in developing distinctly differentiated brand packaging stories. The project has proven to be such a great illustration of what we do that we decided to produce the bottles of cordial as Christmas gifts this year, and to tell the story of the creative process.

The Creativity

Brand identity can be many things. For every brand,
the mix of elements that make up it’s identity is unique.

For many brands packaging is the only communication tool they have. In the big, colourful picture of an integrated brand, the packaging takes-on a crucial role as communicator of brand messages, teller of the brand story, and reflection of the brand personality.

Often we find packaging is the forgotten canvas. It can represent an untapped opportunity for greatness. Packaging that is on-brand is no more expensive than packaging that is off-brand. For brands who don’t have the resources to command highest share of voice in advertising; there’s no reason why you can’t have the most impactful voice at point of purchase. Why shouldn’t marketers aspire to be the stand-out packaging in any category they exist in?

The Magic

Brand brief 01.
Brand Positioning
Hand made, natural ingredients, fresh from the orchard

Brand Essence
A Burst of Taste from Mother Nature

Brand Personality
Honest, Real, Wholesome, Genuine, Cheerful, Friendly, Happy, Spirited, Lively and Passionate

Brand brief 02.
Brand Positioning
Made from the finest ingredients, and exquisite flavours for the sophisticated palette

Brand Essence
The Fine Art of Cordial Making

Brand Personality
Imaginative, Surprising, Artistic, Upper class, Sophisticated, Glamorous, Charming and Smooth

Brand brief 03.
Brand Positioning
Imported, Spanish cordial, a fiesta of flavour

Brand Essence
A delicious taste of Spain

Brand Personality
Cheerful, Warm, Happy, Spirited, Cool, Lively, Passionate, Imaginative, Unique, Artistic

Brand brief 04.
Brand Positioning
Fun, playful, fruity personality – the ‘Nudie’ of the cordial world

Brand Essence
As much fun as you can have with fruit

Brand Personality
Daring, Off-beat, Provocative, Spirited, Cool, Lively, Outgoing, Imaginative, Humorous, Surprising and Fun

Brand brief 05.
Brand Positioning
Traditional recipe, traditional goodness

Brand Essence
Celebrate nature’s bounty

Brand Personality
Wholesome, Original, Genuine, Old-fashioned, Sentimental, Warm, Happy, Reliable, Hardworking, Trustworthy

An Italian Cheese Story
Our initial brief for this project was to develop an Italian story for a range of seven Italian style cheese SKUs.
The brand name (now long forgotten) was unremarkable (I mentioned it was long forgotten) with a slight Eastern European feel. The brand had a foothold in a number of local delicatessens, but the Fresh Cheese Company had negotiated the opportunity to trial the brand in National supermarket chain Woolworths. If we could create a strong enough brand story on shelf to impress the buyers at Woolworths, the Fresh Cheese Company had a
winner on their hands.

Buried in the brief was an orphan product to be brought under the new brand – it was a single, unloved cheese line, but with the wonderfully, evocative Italian name of Mamma Lucia.

As soon as we came across the name we new Mamma Lucia was a winner, and in fact should be the hero element on which we built the brand, with all the other cheese lines joining the Italian party over at Mamma’s house. The guys at the Fresh Cheese Company jumped on-board and we designed a new brand identity (which we’re sad to say didn’t make it to the supermarket shelf) and a range of packaging labels for presentation to the big cheese at Woolworths. The rest as they say in Italy is history. Within six months the Mamma Lucia range had been successfully trialed and was being rolled-out as the primary Italian Cheese range throughout both major supermarket chains Nationally.

As we like to say – ‘Thank your Mamma for the Cheese.’