Client: Agraria
Services Provided: Brand Strategy, Product and Packaging Concept, Design, Direction of Development
I redesigned and overhauled Agraria San Francisco’s bath line. They had various products in the bath category but each item seemed like an “add-on” product without a connection to a cohesive visual plan other than a logo slapped on it as the cohesive branding. I’m the first to support proper exploitation of a brands logo, however the idea of “branding” is so much more than a logo.
The product line needed to communicate a point of view, an approach, a delicate infusion of shape, color, proportion to form identity. The existing bottle (shown below, inset) was/is a nice squared shape. This bottle happened to be the same bottle that competitor Apothia uses in their bath line (shown). Apothia’s bottle looks much better because their branding works well with the bottle shape as well as the better quality cap.
For Agraria, it’s “ok” but not a perfect fit with its more classical personality. For a company with a traditional luxury brand position this was not good enough.
In redesigning Agraria’s overall branding, I had focused on the concept of 8 core fragrances. This idea took the form of an octagon repeated in various forms… as a label shape or an element in a pattern and for the bath line, the octagon manifested as a tall bottle shape, short bottle and hand soap bar with slightly different yet cohesive forms. Below is the design for the smaller soap bar that would be sold as a pair in the box shown above.
