Project: Onesto Foods
Onesto Foods is a health-food company based in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Onesto produces artisan crackers, which are gluten and gmo free. They started their food company with a cracker product, and they have plans to make and sell more delicious and wholesome products in the future. They had initially launched with a logo made from clip art, printed onto labels by a local quick-print shop. Onesto was ready to invest in a professional logo and some key branding items. Dabcovich Design helped Onesto develop their identity and packaging, staying within the bounds of production limitations while raising the level of professionalism. The branding efforts have paid off, with Onesto sales growing rapidly nationwide.
Logo
The first task was to create a logo for Onesto. They wanted their logo to exhibit the same notion of simplicity that their products carry. Onesto crackers are made with simple, natural ingredients, and made by hand. They are Earth- and people- friendly with their wind-powered production, recyclable packaging, and whole, gluten free ingredients.
The name Onesto means “honest” in Italian, and the traditional aspect of (Tuscan) home cooking was a character trait to consider in designing Onesto’s logo. Additionally, Onesto wanted to portray a fresh and modern flair, competing with the other food products on the shelves. The Onesto identity needed to be seen as both classic and current.
After three rounds of sketches and reviews/collaboration, we arrived at the final Onesto logo (above).
The process for creating a logo starts with idea exploration via sketches, followed by collaborative reviews and iterations. Sketches enable discussions about things like symbolism, meaning, typography, taglines, and potential usages for the logo. Stories are revealed, and the brand personality emerges.
For Onesto’s identity development, we explored concepts based on the notions of: family, tradition, Tuscany, natural ingredients, authenticity, hand-made, warmth, home, health, delicious, wholesome, specialty, simplicity, rustic.
Labels for Packaging
The first version of Onesto’s cracker packaging consisted of kraft paper bags, with labels affixed by hand. After reviewing several design options, and envisioning how they would look on the packages, Onesto chose the final label design with a strip of color indicating each flavor.
Despite production restrictions, such as no bleeds, and a standard shape and size, Onesto met their goal to exhibit a more professional brand, with a clear way of distingusihing their products.
Their sales goals were surpassed, leading to printed boxed packaging.
Boxed Packaging
After a few months of ongoing sales increases, Onesto was able to graduate from bags to boxes. They wanted to retain the kraft paper look, and the overall personality we had established. The first box design was a translation and evolution of the original kraft bag and labeled packaging. Boxes allowed for ample room to tell the Onesto story, include ingredients and also pairing suggestions.
We experimented with design and messaging before deciding on the design direction in the sketch below, which served as a final concept sketch and a guide for our photoshoot. Onesto had considered launching a make-your-own product, so this sketch includes an idea on how we could make that product look related, but different than the crackers. That product is on hold for now, as it didnt get as much enthusiasm from retailers.
To prepare for the photoshoot, we used stock photos and photoshopped them to look as close to what we had in mind as possible. This way we got to fully discuss the intentions of the shoot with Onesto and the photographer. (Dabcovich Design partners with Nordberg Photography.)
Photography
Since the new packaging no longer had a window, like the bags did, Onesto wanted to represent their product with photography. Photos enabled us to show the differences between the crackers by highlighting key ingredients in the background, and focusing on details of the crackers, like grains of pink Himalayan salt or dark grey poppy seeds.
We have produced a library of photography for Onesto for each of the different flavors of cracker (now we have 4) and some general mood photos Onesto uses online, for the press, and marketing.
Print-ready File Production
Packaging design requires dyes and accuracy so elements are centered, and appear where they are supposed to on the package. Also, making sure the bar codes are correct is key! The printer provides a PDF proof once they have a file in their system ready to rip. If that is okayed, then they provide a hard copy proof to check colors, and one last chance to proof read content. Here is an example how the final files look before being released to the printer:
Box Updates
After a few months, Onesto was ready to add a new cracker flavor (Everything) and make some adjustments to both design and content. We added more color to the new versions, and made the pairing items prominent on the back. New certification logos were added as well.
Finally, Onesto decided they wanted more obvious color differentiation between the flavors. The artwork below is a "sketch" of the final design before it went into production.
What happened next?
Onesto is cooking up some great new products, stay tuned!
In the meantime, find out where you can buy these delicious crackers at: www.onestofoods.com