NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
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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 we were 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 shelf space. We were told that we had two weeks to rebrand and produce 24 samples for a follow-up meeting our company’s owner had with Target’s representatives.
My goals
By the end of the two weeks and just hitting our deadline, we had 28 sample products with the new updated “yellow border” design.
My goals for this redesign were based upon bringing more appeal to our intended demographic. First, that included adding brighter colors with more exciting artwork to appeal to this younger audience. Second, a higher quality feel to our packages would raise the item’s perceived value. Finally, construct a clean and intentional design that could easily translate across hundreds of products no matter the product layout or dimensions.</p>
<p>One result of this highly successful redesign was noticed immediately by changing the retail chain Target’s mind from a “no” to a “YES!”
CHALLENGES & VICTORIES
One of my main challenges in dealing with this rebrand was the ever-present reality of too much to do and not enough time to do it.</p>
<p>Also an issue, I felt the Nat Geo design I inherited lacked appeal and perceived value. For that reason I fought to address every inch of the new packaging despite the time crunch. Although I was asked to just recreate the legacy back, I championed my belief that a design that addressed every visible side would be worth the extra work, and the results of that added effort became our new standard of excellence.</p>
<p>Our rebrand presentation for Target was due two weeks after the completion of the new design concept, and I had already been tasked with creating 26 different packages for that presentation. Despite my misgivings about what I considered a completely unreasonable timeline, my team rallied, and with a crazy push of double and even triple shifts, we completed 28 high-quality packages and won Target as a new client.
PACKAGING - BEFORE AND AFTER
Jordan Willing
Founder of JMW Sales (now Blue Marble)
CHALLENGES & VICTORIES
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.</p>
<p>The main challenge was figuring out how to best design the packaging in a way that our China-based manufacturer 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.</p>
<p>Shown right is an example of a Photoshop mock-up of what the packaging would look like for our sell sheets, catalogs and amazon pages. It was created by designing how I felt the product could look in illustrator, bringing the vector dielines into Autodesk Maya to build 3d panels, screen capturing an angle that matched our other catalog packaging shots so the product would have believable perspective lines, pasting and warping the illustrator art over the panels in Photoshop and finishing it off by adding shadows and highlights to simulate depth. It sounds like quite a process, but I find it rather enjoyable. If I had more time to work on it, I would have included highlights simulating the plastic clam shell.</p>
<p>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.
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CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN
National Geographic
DISPLAY DESIGNS
FOR IN-STORE RETAIL SPACES
WILDLIFE WOW!
Bringing animals to life!
Once 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.
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.
UI DESIGN
FOR COMPANION APPS
PACKAGE DESIGN
FOR 60+ FIGURES
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.
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.