This week’s session post focuses on Yael Miller, Principle at Miller Creative, LLC.
Yael Miller is editor-at-large of The Dieline and is principal of Miller Creative, a branding and packaging design consultancy specializing in naming, branding and packaging design. She is also co-founder of Vanity Barcodes and Share Some Candy. Yael has more than 10 years of design experience, with clients ranging from start-ups to international brands, including food, confectionary and health/beauty brands. She draws on her background in product development and food manufacturing to fuse both aesthetic and pragmatic values for smart branding and packaging solutions.
The Session: Small Budget, Big Impact
“Start-ups and small companies often have BIG ideas and small budgets. But getting resourceful with a smaller budget doesn’t mean cutting creative corners. In this session, Yael Miller will share her techniques for creating maximum impact within the constraints of a small budget. Through examples of real work, you’ll discover field-tested ideas for keeping costs down (and creativity up) on your next brand building or package development project.”
Below are previews of new packaging that launched this past week at Expo West (Natural Food Expo) in California.
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“We created the brand identity for Cybele’s Free-toEat which included: a custom lettered wordmark for Cybele’s™, the ‘Free of the Top 8 Allergens’ lockup packaging design for the brand’s debut range of allergy-friendly cookies. An open, clean palette drives the brand voice to help convey freshness, purity from various food allergens and help it stand out on busy store shelves. The products were recently debuted at Natural Expo West and received enormous positive feedback from retail buyers. The products will be available in stores in the coming months.”
Other works by Miller Creative
“We were called upon by GLK Foods to craft a brand name, identity and packaging for a new line of imported varietal olives. Working with the client, we established the name Verdi™ and created a logo of two olives with a hidden ‘V’. The packaging has a modern look, rather than a traditional old-world Italian vibe. A unique olive-leaf-shaped window gives a peek of the product inside. Verdi products are sold nationwide in stores like Costco.”
“Bunches & Bunches is a gourmet food brand. The client introduced a line of small-batch premium dog treats. Due to the small size of the runs we devised packaging that relied on stock barrier-lined tin-tie bags made from a natural unbleached kraft material. The bags were printed letterpress in a quantity of 1000 units and a tamper-evident seal was rubber stamped. Although this was a low-budget and low quantity product, we were able to create something special and on-brand.”
“We provided naming, brand identity and packaging design for this small skincare brand. A combination of nutraceuticals and feminine beauty were juxtaposed for the voice of this brand. The lower budget of this project required the use of stock patterns, which we boosted with high-contrast Pantone colors for maximum impact on shelf, setting it quite a bit apart from the current packaging typical of drug store skincare products.”
“This start-up salumi maker in Virginia, launched in 2009, has already made big waves in the food world with features in Food & Wine Magazine and The New York Times. Their artisanal salame and other slow-cured products are made from heritage-breed, sustainably farmed hogs in the USA, but are based on old-world Italian salumi recipes handed down to the founder, Oliviero “Olli” Colmignoli. We worked with Olli to establish a brand name, brand identity, packaging, website and more. Olli products are available online and at fine retailers nationwide, like Whole Foods and Williams-Sonoma.”
