Carolyn Crewell, the founder of Carman’s Fine Foods was just an 18 year old university student when she established the business in 1992. She scraped together $1000 to pay for  when her employer placed her small business on the market for sale. Two years later, Crewell bought out her business partner. The first five years was very difficult, she was broke and had enormous responsibilities, often feeling completely overwhelmed.

Twenty years later, Carman’s now exports to over 32 countries (such as Malaysia, Singapore, US) with a philosophy of using food ingredients from the kitchen and enriching lives every day. Carman’s has done so well due to a customer driven brand resonating with it’s people. The company has ignored following the direction of other companies in their market and haven’t been afraid to try different approaches.

Up until 2010 Carman’s packaging lacked real passion and love and came across as cluttered, conservative and cold. Carman’s realised they were not living their values of sharing their love and passion which was stated on their packaging. They under went a redesign keeping elements of the initial packaging, such as the bold black colour backgrounds, and added small changes which made a big difference. Carman’s brought personality, quirky energy and warmth to the brand’s packaging through it’s visual fun illustrations. Each variety has it’s own friendly, yet quirky hand drawn chalkboard illustration that tells an individual story. A tagline was also incorporated to explain the brand’s ethos in a simple and effective way.

With it’s fun, refreshed and rejuvenated look and feel, Carman’s results were quite impressive. Over 20% of Carman’s customers surveyed purchased a Carman’s product entirely based on the aesthetic appeal of the packaging. The successful communication of their key messages was evident by the increase in market shares and distribution and sales increase of 47.1% in Coles and 62.6% in Woolworths.

Carmen’s relaunched without advertising their new packaging. Their only investment in 2010 was towards their brand and packaging redesign.

PoliticsDirect has been rebranded. As a result the public affairs consulting service (now called Brevia Consulting) sports a clean, no-nonsense identity, and a set of unique icons drawn by illustrator Chris Gray…

The identity (website screengrab, above) follows a branding review that took place over a five month period. Figtree’s research found that PoliticsDirect had a name that no longer clearly defined what it actually did, but that it had a reputation for being “straight-talking, considered, quick and precise.” It’s this insight that informed the change of name to Brevia Consulting, and which also informed the straight-forward, black and white graphic approach to the identity.

“We wanted to create a set of icons that felt intelligent, sophisticated and ownable,” says Figtree’s Melanie Townsend of the 20 icons created specially for Brevia’s new identity system. “There are lots of icons out there and we wanted to try our best to make them look different. Our approach was to try and put a certain level of detail in them using keylines, though we had to ensure they would work at small scale as well as larger.”

Illustration is a great way to help tell a story around a brand. At a glance, the illustration creates a sense of personality and character. It is a very effective way of communicating especially for packaging design where shelf appeal and a point of difference is essential.

Firstly a brand consultant will determine the concept behind the product. What is the core message they want to convey. Illustration helps bring this message to life, develop the story and create emotive visuals that can engage in a way that is sometimes more effective than words or photography.

An illustrator can add a touch of quirkiness, cuteness or create a looseness or unstructured feel around a brand. A sense of fun has been captured on the packaging for Asda’s milkshakes with illustrations in the shape of a strawberry and chocolate but with the personality of a cow.