PACKAGING & RANGE

A brief look into the effectiveness of creating a range in designing for packaging

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Contents
Stanley Donwood, The King of Limbs....... p. 2 Pentagram, Budgens & Londis................. p. 4 Mucho, Buenas Migas.............................. p. 6 Gaslight Foundry, The Coffee Duck.......... p. 8 David Ravandi, 123 Organic Tequila....... p. 10

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Stanley Donwood, Brighton The King of Limbs
Radiohead's good friend and artist/designer, Stanley Donwood, produced the design for their latest album The King of Limbs. He works as a freelance artist and designer and is best know from creating all of Radiohead's artwork and design. He created a fantastic limited edition range for the release of The King of Limbs, which works beautifully as a set. He even included a lovely newspaper-based publication to accompany the album. In extending the range, he in turn has extended the presence of the album.

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Pentagram, London Budgens & Londis
I became aware of this lovely typographic range of wines after greeting a visiting friend who was brandishing a bottle of the Claret pictured here. Intrigued by the bold design of this single bottle I took up some research on it to discover the rest. I was even more surprised - or rather, not surprised - to discover that Pentagram were behind this design mastery. A simple colour palette and bold label composition certainly mark these wines as unique on the shelves of Budges and Londis, who these wines were specifically designed for. Although admittedly, I haven't tried any yet myself. (My visiting friend guzzled the Claret by himself). But I do look forward to getting my hands on for the sake of wine and design.

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Mucho, New York Buenas Migas
Corporate branding and identity. Mucho wanted to give a bold yet natural feel to this huge range of products that merge to form this brand. They claim to have done this through bold type with a painted watercolour effect. They haven't done a bad job really. The colour palette is my favourite. The colours are striking but not too saturated and the combinations of colour work very well. I particularly like the tins of tea as a range. They're lovely to look at.

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Gaslight Type Foundry, Bryansk The Coffee Duck
This is a fantastic branding, identity and typography project. I was surprised to discover that it was Russian. Although it seems that germanic letterforms have also been designed for the typeface. Whether this encompass the prominence of the West in a Russia that echos the presence and aura of its Communist past or not, it's a beautiful typeface that deserves to be spread over all letterforms of all languages for all nationalities and cultures to enjoy. The type is utilised over a tidy range of coffee and coffee-based products also. I'm not sure what the duck is all about, but I like not knowing. Sometimes it's satisfying to indulge in the the pure artistic hedonism of enjoying an image for its aesthetics and nothing more. And this duck does just that. Hats off to these Russian graphic artisans.

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David Ravandi, Los Angeles 123 Organic Tequila
Organically produced in every way. The labels and bottles are made of organic paper and glass respectively. Even the ink is organic soy ink. The design has some fantastic illustrations by a Mexican etching artist with some lovely numerical characters to clearly distinguish one tequila from another. A great design all around. Each bottle in the range can be distinguished as well as fit into a clear set to form a lovely range of three.

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'The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.' William Somerset Maugham