NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

CASE STUDY: REDESIGNING A BRAND

Brand Redesign Case Study

STEM Science Toy Line 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS

Despite the amazing amount of workload required of my design team at JMW, there came a time when I was able to focus on rebranding our considerable amount of National geographic STEM science toy products. While fairly strong sellers, the branding designed by a previous artist was holding the line back from true retail greatness. 

The tipping point came when retail chain Target rejected JMW’s application for in-store placement. I was told that we had two weeks to rebrand and produce 26 samples for a follow-up meeting our company’s owner had with Target’s reps.

My goals for this redesign focused on bringing more appeal to our intended demographic. With an intended age range of 8-14 year olds, the black bar version (shown below) lacked appeal.

Correcting that issue included adding brighter colors with more exciting artwork to attract a younger audience and upgrading to a higher quality feel with special finishes like a spotUV layer would raise the item’s perceived value.  Finally, I focused on a clean and intentional design that could easily translate across hundreds of products no matter the package layout and dimensions.

PACKAGING - BEFORE AND AFTER

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After finishing my branding and layout redesign for the new packaging, my team rallied and with a week of double and even triple shifts, we presented 28 sample products with the new updated “yellow border” design (shown above right) instead of the requested 26, which gave the owner of the company the ammunition he needed to turn Target’s previous “no” to a “YES” and secure the deal.

FINAL DESIGN

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE TASTING

“Some of his biggest accomplishments at JMW include architecting and executing a complete rebrand of our entire National Geographic line of consumer products.  Dan either managed or personally executed the re-brand of nearly 100 products which each required packaging overhauls, new guide booklets, instructions, and marketing graphics. His re-brand won our company many large clients and helped us secure placements with major retailers across the globe.”
Jordan Willing
Founder of JMW Sales (now Blue Marble)
Read the entire letter of recommendation >

CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN

National Geographic

ABOVE & BEYOND

GOING THE EXTRA MILE

A great example of my personal approach to branding and package design is visible on the back of these dig kits. My focus and specialty is raising the perceived value of a product by elevating the customer’s experience.

Although we were on an extremely tight deadline, I fought for every inch of that package to meet my level of quality, which required the package backs be as exciting as the fronts.

Although I was asked to just recreate the plain, mostly blank, and boring legacy back, I championed my belief that a design which addressed every visible side would be worth the extra work, and the results of that added effort became our new standard of excellence.
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REMAKING EVERY SINGLE PACKAGE

Now that the redesign was done, time for the real work to begin!

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CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN

National Geographic

OUTSIDE OF THE BOX

A NEW PACKAGE STYLE

When the owner of JMW returned from a trip overseas with a new interest in the possibility of offering products in clam shell packages with layers and depth, it was a nice change in pace from what the company had been doing up to that point.

The main challenge was figuring out how to best design the packaging in a way that our overseas manufacturing team would be able to easily and quickly construct.  I will admit, however, that challenges like this make creating unique packaging one of my favorite types of projects.

Shown here is an example of a Photoshop mock-up I created to convey what the packaging would look like but was actually also used for our sell sheets, catalogs, and amazon pages. If I had known the extent the files would be used and if I had more time to work on it, I would have included highlights simulating the plastic clam shell rather than just the floating panels.

NG_YB_3d

I was frequently required to concept and construct digital packages like this for products before the item had even been designed, let alone hold an actual sample.

CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN

National Geographic

DISPLAY DESIGNS

FOR IN-STORE RETAIL SPACES

Once we had the packaging and booklets designed and off to the package manufacturer, I was tasked with creating retail display units for our various in-store placements.  I created store-specific displays for Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Sam’s Club, Michael’s Art’s & Crafts, and many other national retail chains. A selection of display designs can be found here.
I designed the display shown here to be made out of wood with an integrated TV screen built into the top panel allowing for a product line commercial to be played on loop. Because the launch of National Geographic’s WILDLIFE WOW! figures were so new and different, we needed a bit extra to help educate the consumers as to exactly how the product and companion augmented-reality app differed from the competition.
Which is a great segue into introducing a major product line launch project using the brand-new “Yellow-Border” branding, WILDLIFE WOW!
WowDispaly

WILDLIFE WOW!

Bringing animals to life!

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With the new “Yellow-Border” brand redesign was finalized and in place, the process of adding new products became fairly quick and easy. One exception, however, was a new group of items added to the Nat Geo STEM line-up.

CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN

National Geographic

WILDLIFE WOW!

SOFT FIGURES WITH AUGMENTED REALITY APP

WILDLIFE WOW! was National Geographic’s STEM science toy line of soft, squeezable animal figures with all the detail of hard plastic. At the time, this was a completely unique and new-to-market manufacturing technology with a number of exciting extras including a companion mobile app for both Apple iOS and Android platforms featuring both interactive augmented and virtual reality options.
WowBoxSM

PACKAGE DESIGN

FOR 60+ UNIQUE FIGURES

An exceptionally challenging package design project due to the unique and exceptionally varied shapes and sizes of the products.  Add in an included tracker card for the augmented reality app as well as the need for customers to be able to actually squeeze the figures and you have the making of a seriously complex design project.
Check out a selection of the hundreds of packages I have designed here!

UI DESIGN

FOR COMPANION APPS

More than just a regular animal toy, the line utilized both augmented and virtual reality to allow customers to research and identify different parts of the animal, watch it walk around their tables, and even look inside the figures in real-time to see the creature’s skeleton using a companion app’s “X-ray view”.
 A selection of my user interface designs can be found here. (Yes, I designed the UI graphics for this app too)
WowApp

The initial catalog sell-sheet I designed for the line while finalizing the packaging, insert cards, retail displays, and UI app interface was the double-sided tri-fold shown below.  While I tended to average around 60-80 hour workweeks for the years I worked at this company, this kind of workload found me topping out at 122 hours in one week.

WowCat1_2000
WowCat2_2000
SBL_Rebrand

Thank you for your time!

Thank you for reading about this fun yet challenging National Geographic rebrand project.  If you enjoyed this exploration into my process and would like to see more, you can check out the Silver Brush Limited: Artist Brush Set rebrand case study.

READ THE SILVER BRUSH REBRAND CASE STUDY
RETURN TO BRAND DESIGN