It has been said that consumers vote with their wallets. Their votes are now being cast for brands that engage and entertain; that create rich environments in which they can share experiences with like-minded fans. Entertainment properties are already in the forefront of engagement. The question is: … Read More
Nothing communicates your brand to your consumers in the same way that your packaging does. Packaging, at its best, refers back to the brand and leverages the brand's chief assets. It is also powerful enough to be considered the brand's most important consumer touch point. Packaging makes … Read More
As design consultants, we put quite a bit of effort into developing great packaging. We immerse ourselves deeply into our clients' brands conducting consumer and market research to determine how best to visually and verbally differentiate them among their competitors within their respective categories. We identify which … Read More
We've been developing style guides for licensed entertainment brands for the last 20 years. During that time, we've generated more than 10,000 pieces of original art for countless licensing programs representing just about every entertainment genre, with licensed consumer products appearing in almost every retail category. Thousands … Read More
I place a very high value on the discussions I have with my clients about the issues they're struggling with as they develop packaging for their products. Whether they're with a brand owner or licensee, these conversations help to identify which challenges are most common. And, as … Read More
All successful licensed brands in the marketplace benefit from catch phrases so closely associated with their content and characters that they elicit immediate recognition and a powerful emotional connection with fans. Although this association can sometimes happen serendipitously, more often than not, these phrases are carefully crafted … Read More
In a retail landscape filled with traditional consumer product brands turned licensed brands, it's virtually impossible for consumers to tell the difference between core products and licensed products bearing the same brand name. Quite often, licensed products appear to be extensions of a brand's core product line. … Read More
In marketing circles, we focus on brand building by effectively reaching customers, and getting their endorsement. The business intelligentsia has been preaching about the need to connect with customers on both intellectual and emotional levels for many years. Most of us would readily agree with this idea. … Read More
In my last post, I discussed how the role of the pencil sketch has changed dramatically with the adoption of digital technology as the industry-wide standard approach to articulating design solutions. However, those of us who favor pencil and paper over paths and pixels during the conceptualization … Read More
Long, long ago, before digital technology began to infiltrate the world of design, promising to simplify the more laborious tasks associated with the discipline, the ability to articulate design solutions merely using pencil and paper was a prerequisite. Whether taking the form of rough thumbnails generated during a … Read More
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