One area of branding that I really enjoy is that of sub brands.
Often a business will diversify into other services and for any SME it’s often better to keep a consistent brand feel for the sub brands.
This can be something that picks up cues from the main brand like typography, icon or colours – perhaps even the core icon with a different company name set in the same style as a very cost effective way to develop that sub brand. See below for some examples.
Or another way is to develop a logo that design wise is a little further from the main brand but still maintains a family feel. The example below for Munchie & Millie At Home perfectly demonstrates how their ‘At Home’ off shoot still reflects the original brand values but are subtly re addressed for the slightly different target market.
But sometimes thinking about sub brands from the beginning can actually save re design and costly reprints of materials. How you may ask, well here’s a good example.
We were tasked with making some improvements to this packaging design for Sweet Dreams ‘Choc Nibbles’ bags. Below is what the bag looked like when we came on board and please note this is not our design work!
One of the main issues with the bag was that when other flavours in the range were added there was no thought how those flavours, or think of them as sub brands, would look.
Choc Nibbles was the original and ‘plain’ flavour so when other flavours like mint were introduced, how could the logo be adapted as the product was still effectively Choc Nibbles. Below is our version of the bag.
Our solution was to add the ‘flavour text’ to the logo but also for future flavour differentiation we also added a top thin swoosh in the flavour colour; changed the flavour descriptor to the flavour colour and lastly made the bag Bert was holding the flavour colour. Below is the Toffee version of the bag.
So with the changes mentioned above, it made the creation of the other flavours much more straightforward. If we hadn’t added ‘Original’ to the first bag then when the other flavours were added the first bag would have had to be re designed to make it obvious that this was the plain version of the range adding more cost.
Just out of interest we also made a whole host of other changes to improve the bag and tub label designs – adding a stronger brand typeface; playing down the manufacturing company; clearer flavour descriptor and a much more user friendly back with some customer info. Here are all the different flavoured labels and you can see how the flavour logos work well as a set.
So who do you know who has a business that has an off shoot company or product? Where a bit of thought to the design could help all areas of the business work together and help to strengthen the overall image of the core business.
We can help, just give me a call.
Dominic