KetoKrate
Product and Brand Redesign
ROLE | Brand Designer and Illustrator
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TIME | 3 Months
Wha Happen?
The Orange Box
KetoKrate approached me to expand their brand's personality via unique illustrations and designs. This involved a lot of experimentation and a lot of different projects, but eventually, this lead to redesigning the product packaging for their subscription keto snack service.
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The PROBLEM
The SOLUTION
KetoKrate's delivery box was generic. Sure it was bright orange, which is recognizable, but otherwise it didn't have much more than the company logo. The stakeholder wanted this box to be fun, something customers would see from a distance and be excited before they could even pick it up.
KetoKrate's new box features new, high energy illustrations that give it a ton of character and bring the excitement when customers receive their monthly snacks. It maintains the iconic orange while updating the whole look. It's party inside and out!
Research
Competitor's Box Art
We wanted to look at what was working for similar monthly subscription boxes. The stakeholder brought several examples that they resonated with and felt would be a good direction for KetoKrate's brand.
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What we found were boxes that were colorful, fun, and graphic. We also saw a lot of use of characters, often actively engaging with the products inside. Exciting prints on the interior box was also a strategy we saw that added to this feeling of revealing an exciting gift every month. A QR code below the products leading to online recipes, articles, and other content also adds just a little bit of extra value, even after all the product is gone.
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Ideation
First Passes and Sketches
Initial designs took inspiration from what we saw in competitor's boxes. We went with a limited color palette, but retained that iconic orange that customers had come to expect from a KetoKrate delivery.
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Having already secured a printer, the limited color palette would help to reduce printing costs over full color inkjet printing, which is something the stakeholder really wanted to focus on. As a smaller company producing a lot of boxes frequently, budget was a big concern.
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Although the design lead and I liked the direction this was going in, after testing the design internally, we found people wanted something more exciting and active.
Active Silhouettes
To focus more on that idea of activity, I pulled back and focused on characters easily recognizable silhouettes. This included fun poses, but also ensuring the snacks were also recognizable at a glance. We wanted to push KetoKrate as a relatable , millennial, lifestyle brand.
Through an iterative sketch process, we began to hone in on particular characters that the stakeholder resonated with and felt represented the brand best.
90's Vibes
Bringing the sketches into full color we really wanted to lean into that millennial nostalgia. We knew we'd need some shapes to fill spaces and create background elements so we took squiggle, lightning bolt, and pill shapes prevalent in those bright early 90's designs. Plus those bright, blocky colors popular on 90's windbreakers.
Character Design
Hypercolor Mascots
This is where our mascots really came to life. The team loved them and we had a blast coming up with new activities for them to do and ways to incorporate the KetoKrate products into their poses. We were excited to incorporate this bright, hyper saturated palette into the whole brand.
Internal tests showed positive reactions to these designs. They pushed exactly the kind of fun, quirky identity KetoKrate wanted. So having those positive results we began to incorporate those into a new box design.
We knew we wanted a scene using these characters, likely something with them around a table. We wanted to center this idea of community and fun around snacking together.
Uh oh. Budget cuts.
This all came to a bit of a grinding halt when we got word from on high that we could no longer afford even 8 color printing on our boxes. It was a two color die or nothing.
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Needless to say, this was disappointing and demotivating. Myself and my team lead felt blindsided and worried that all the work we had done had been for nothing.
But we were determined to make it work. We loved these illustrations, and I would do everything in my power to make them work in two color.
Final Box Design
Back to Basics (And Orange)
If we were going to be limited to one color, it had to be orange. KetoKrate already had the brand recognition, and something the stakeholder said at the beginning of this journey stuck in my mind. They wanted something that customers could spot from a distance and be excited about, something that they could see at their door as they drive up to their house. And orange is bright, obvious, and again, already had the recognition.
I took those character designs and shifted them to work in two tone. This way they could be printed with a single color ink die.
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This also meant I had to redo the line work to meet minimum widths for a traditional physical die, which is something I had not originally accounted for thinking we would do inkjet printing.
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But in the end, this meant designs that were more easily reusable in far more contexts.
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The Final Box Layout
The limitations created by the new budget ended up being a blessing in disguise. The direction we had to go in became so much more clear and the box took shape quickly. The front would have KetoKrate's original logo with the new characters dancing playfully atop it. On the front flap, one character pulls back the curtain to reveal some of our iconic snacks, adding a little excitement and anticipation.
The bottom of the box features this repeating pattern of the characters along with some of those 90's inspired squiggles and shapes we had so wanted to include before.
My personal favorite part of the box is this inside flap. I included these balloons on the very type to give the impression that they are rising from the box to the ceiling as the box is opened. Inside is a party scene using our characters, inviting the customer to join in the fun. A couple calls to action encourage customers to post photos featuring KetoKrate to social media and scan a QR code to reach the KetoKrate website.
Finally, the interior of the box features a call to action to order more snacks! Obviously you enjoyed this box if you made it this far, right?
Reflection
How'd We Get here?
And what have we learned?
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Well, for one, always work with vectors non-destructively in case budget cuts force you to rework them entirely.
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That's a lesson I will never forget after this one.
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But more importantly...
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I really learned to roll with the punches and appreciate that work can always be adapted to fit the project. The work we did before the budget cut wasn't for nothing, even if it felt like it in the moment.
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The truth is those budget cuts forced us to think more strategically, and in the end, resulted in a better product. This project taught me to think minimally, our head was in the clouds at the start, and I think it made the project harder to get a hold of.
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Since this, I've put a heavy focus on putting limitations on projects from the start. Setting parameters that will make solid, thoughtful, and self contained core product. Once that's in place, we can expand to 90's hyper-color later.
