Minimalistic Designs of Consumer Products
Our lives are often inundated with countless things screaming for our attention: media, packaging, signs, the web etc. When we’re searching through the clutter trying to find which product to choose, it’s often magical when our eyes rest on a beautiful, clean, well designed piece. The Minimalist Effect in the Maximalist Market does just that. Created by Antrepo which is a multi-disciplinary design consultancy that derives their power from exciting and passionate design members who are actively contributing to the core of design. Antrepo takes several popular brands, creates a simple variation and a more simplified variation. The result is stunning, clean, simple and powerful. We can only hope that some of these brands embody these principles.
Corn Flakes
Durex
Lindt
Mr Muscle
Nesquik
Nutella
Pringles
Red Bull
Schweppes
Toffifee
Antrepo
Site: Antrepo4.com
Blog: A2591.com
Twitter: @Antrepo
Facebook: Antrepo
Chad Engle is currently slaying pixels @BoomtownROI. He abides in coastal Charleston, SC and enjoys living on an island. You should follow, harass or chat to him on twitter @chadengle and @fuelcreativity .
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im a big fan of the trends of the past decades and the effect given to simpliicty here echoes the styles of the past century and they look just as powerful as they do now. in the end, i believe, we will all return to this level of simplicity which i love as a creative.
The first offering reminded me of a similar exercise I performed a few years ago now after Weetabix re-branded their packaging which I much admire. It stood up extremely well in terms of the letter shapes and colour palette when reduced down to the bare bones.
Unfortunately this is identical to the “rip-off” workflow that produces many low-end Supermarket own-brand copies of well known household goods on a daily basis (clones in terms of what’s on the box but not always what’s in the box).
Anyway, another good post. A great way to get people to assess the basic strengths of any design.
Keep up the great work – Deano
I’m not a big fan of Corn Flakes, Nesquik or the Pringles designs. The rest of them are amazing with their simplicity.
Fantastic exercise, one can hope this philosophy catches on. Schweppes and Nutella are exquisite. Great work.
No red in Red Bull ?
I think these concepts were brilliantly executed.
However, I think some of these designs may not benefit the product in the long run.
Now, I’m no branding expert, but seeing a picture of chocolate milk would make me buy Nesquick more than seeing a well executed design. In the case of food, there’s something to say about showing someone the application of what they can experience with it. Unless of course your brand awareness is so ridiculously strong, it automatically conjures the notion of the experience in the consumer, e.g. Coca-Cola.
I too think these are genius in design, but looking through these my eyes were attracted to the appeal of what the product brings INSIDE the containers. Showing this with an image on the outside drew me to the beginning image more times than the simplistic design.
I agree. Having the more detailed images on the outside when it comes to food products, makes me more interested and ‘hungry” to purchase them. Simplistic designs I feel work best for items such as Shampoos, cleaning supplies, make up, bath wash, and such but for food not so much.
I am big on minimalism, however this method can only work with brands with a mature target market. For example I like the Corn Flakes, Nesquik, and Toffee labels as they were before. These items are created to be fun and vibrant.
On the contrary, the more sophisticated brands like Redbull, Durex, and Lindt look even better stripped away from the fluffy graphics.
I’m on the fence. It depends on the brand.
The Nutella is very nice, letting the product show more make it seem more rich and enjoyable.
For some reason, the minimalist designs make me feel more at ease. :)
I would like to make a reminder that the market for these products are not the ‘design sophisticate’ and it would not serve the companies to alienate their consumers. The appeal of the minimal should be observed in context, including the rise of minimal art as a consequence of one prominent buyer deciding on decorating his collection with it.
Design abundance might appeal to those who live without abundance, and the ‘elegance’ of minimalism might be taken for sparsity when one only owns one.
the simpler approach nowadays are considered as packaging of OEM samples. hehe.
trends i guess. it was the in style way back. who knows it will be the in thing again soon.
then again, an image of the box content always attracts the common eye.
With Red Bull and Mr Muscle I’m actually lovin’ the minimalist look! Thanks for sharing!
nutella. yup. awesome
Consumer products benefit from having pictures that show the contents.
Like cereal is ‘bought’ by 2-year-olds. They can’t read, yet they know which one they want by the picture. There is a certain amount of a 2-year-old in each adult consumer too.
Getting rid of the silver flags on Red Bull is good, but it needs a red dot behind the bulls or red bulls. One point of off-setting color grabs attention – and it’s all about attention on the supermarket shelves.
Overall good cleanup on the packaging but keep in mind the product selling needs.
Didn’t we learn anything from Arnell and Tropicana? Some of these are interesting, but ultimately much of the character about these products is gone.
Yes – whilst we may *think* we desire such clarity and purity from our product packages, this is not always the case. It is true that we lose something from these brands. I also cannot see my children choosing these brands!
This type of brand reduction seems to be popular at the moment. I have also seen these ‘unevolved brands’ and also the very difficult quiz of thebrandquiz.com which is perhaps taking things even further in this direction.