We were contacted by a new business called Magic of Mushrooms in late 2023. They had been developing a range of mushroom tinctures used by the health conscious to add to smoothies. Different mushroom varieties may potentially provide various health benefits including the ability to focus/concentrate as well as immune support, insomnia and depression.
Brent and Josie had already sourced the vessels the products would be retailed in, but needed a label to help them stand out in a crowded retail space.
Part of our process when taking on a packaging project, is to spend time researching competitor product packaging. This is to ensure we are able to come up with a number of suggestions that will help to create the design brief and enable the packaging to stand out against its competition. As part of our research for this project, we came up with the following suggestions to assist the manufacturer in creating a "stand out" design for their new to market product;
We created 3 different concepts for this project. Each had a very different look to them, all used bright bold colours and one type used a completely white based label with a bright mushroom image on the front. You could almost call it a cross between branding for Apple and Super Mario Bros!
The client spent a few days deliberating on the different styles and made a decision to move forward on a design which was almost exactly the same as the production version. We made the required changes along with creating alternate colour options for the concept.
The first product titled "Lion's Mane" uses the cream background colour with deep green. Future products may see these colours expanded upon with greens, browns, reds or purples. Whilst one of our suggestions was to use bright, bold colours, the client felt that it didn't suit their ideal brand and chose to use more organic earthy tones. Whilst this goes against our initial research on colour selection which is different from its competitors, it still manages to catch your attention due to the pared-back design with minimal clutter and the use of a single unbroken colour across the label.
Having the labels printed and manufactured was handled internally by Outspoken Entourage through a local wholesale supplier we have been using for many years. The labels were printed on a high quality matt substrate with soft rounded edges and supplied on rolls for hand application.
Due to the very small details on the side of the labels, the print supplier needed to be of a very high standard to ensure text legibility on such a small scale. The 100ml label is only 120mm x 70mm with the 50ml label 100mm x 50mm. That's not a heap of space to fit everything in (country of manufacture, batch and expiry dates, barcode, ingredients, directions, storage and safety information, social media accounts, title, benefit, logo) AND make the design look good, but we managed to create a great look that can be expanded upon in the future through use of alternate colours.
