Innocent

As one of the brands that visually dominates the fridges of most supermarkets, Innocent are key for me to look at. Their visual language reflects their simple ethos of selling pure, healthy products which contain no added anything. The use of slightly off white paper allows the vibrant natural colours of their products to stand out and sell the product rather than resorting to gimmickry. The labels themselves are the epitomy of simple using black for the text, white background and the colour of the product for the flavour description and the mascot (the little guy with the halo).

As well as being simple and clean to suggest purity there is also an endearing, naive quality to innocent's branding. The emblem of the face with the halo is distinctly hand-drawn, it looks like it could have been knocked up in a few minutes and evokes associations with childhood scrawls and doodles. The use of the rounded type (VAG rounded) reinforces the naive, childlike feel of the innocent designs as it alludes to the colourful fridge magnet plastic letters we all used to play with as well as (this may just be me) picture books and charts.




This is an aesthetic which aims to connote purity, naivety and of course innocence and reflects innocent's identity as a personable, friendly brand, the polar opposite of say coca-cola (who have ironically just bought a stake in innocent) whose branding is slick, colourful and brash.

Innocent's branding has been aped or at least drawn upon extensively by a multitude of competitors in the healthy food and drinks market and the use of rounded sans serifs, minimal colours, clean designs has become pretty much THE visual language for products which want to appear healthy.

Although I want consumers to understand that my product is healthy and will have to heed this visual language, the absolute last thing I want to do is just mimic innocent as for one my product is completely different (but not a million miles away from their new veg pots) but also I hate the idea of just adopting the existing visual language because people will 'get it'. I think products are successful because they stand out (like innocent) and look good in their own right, if I saw an innocent wannabe next to innocent I would not pick the imitator. That said I know branding is a bit more complicated than that and that it cannot be so individual as to confuse, my mushy peas package cannot look like a pot of boot polish or a pouch of sugar coated chocolate based snack foods.

I think I will try and draw upon the principle that innocent have used successfully of letting the colour of the product do the selling. As I stated in my last blog I want the product itself to be a lush green, exuding healthiness, purity, nature and freshness. In accordance with this I'm also going to do a quick study of original source packaging as they are another brand who use this principle well.

Research:

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/Case-Studies/All-Case-Studies/Innocent-Smoothies/

Interesting Design Council article on innocent

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/Case-Studies/All-Case-Studies/Innocent-Smoothies/Packaging-refresh/

Design Council article on innocent focusing more on branding