The answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes, as you do not play around with a logotype, a colour scheme or an icon! No, as you can easily adapt to local conditions if you understand a visual identity and how, within a given framework, you can be creative without the consumer noticing deviations.
During my recent travel to Asia to teach communication, I obviously passed through a number of airports, most of them having the same tax-free business offering universal brands from Toblerone to Hermès, from Rolex to Johnnie Walker.
Between the two World Wars, the Swedish businessman Ivar Kreuger built an emporium with safety matches. They were no doubt of the highest quality, but so was the marketing of these matches, marketing built upon design! Fascinating designs by acknowledged artists, as the profession ‘package designer’ was not yet established. The very diverse designs were not built on today’s positioning, nor on target thinking, but according to the clients’ taste. Unfortunately, Mr Kreuger’s ‘empire’ broke down with his sudden death in 1932.
In my book, as well as on this site, I have written about those books that have had an impact on my way of working and inspired me to do things a little differently.
Brand identity is important. It is certainly not something you play around with. It is something that , if properly handled, increases the strength of a brand every time it is seen. This short article will try to show how it is seen.
Most consumers know that wood fibers come from trees, steel from iron ore and aluminium from bauxite. Most of us may also know that, with 8%, aluminium is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust.
How can it be that although packaging and everything related to it is one of the biggest industries in the world…
Many food and drink products are today very similar which is due to the use of the same raw material, the same technical equipment in factories, from mixers to packaging line.
… because nobody seems to care – which is a pity, as this panel is an ideal means to strengthen the bond with the consumer! If well done it can become as interesting as the front. This is what Frito Lay have done with their Chinese potato chips design.
I have always been an admirer of Ferrero packaging and point-of-sale material and I was even more impressed when I saw how they updated the Rondnoir carton.
Recently, I had the opportunity to give a speech for the Russian meat industry which, in package design, is many years behind compared to Western Europe.
Mr Musheg Mkhitaryan, native from the Ararat region in Armenia, is a very special man. He not only built a water factory in the Ararat Valley, but after three unsuccessful design studies, he saw me on Russian television and decided on the spot that I was his man to help out with his project.
Here it is…the pack which, by saying next to nothin, says a lot.
Having the chance to work on ‘both sides of the fence’, i.e. as a designer in the design world with agencies and as a marketeer in the business world with both retailers and small and big FMCG companies I am, as many readers might have understood, often frustrated. But also thrilled, as there is so much still undone, as Ingvar Kamprad at IKEA so rightly said a few years ago.
… or maybe both! The attentive package designer has certainly noticed the great number of brands which are short and memorable, using only a letter, a number, or both.
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Born in Sweden and educated at the Graphic Institute in Stockholm, Lars Wallentin moved 1964 to Switzerland to the Nestlé headquarters where he was responsible, during almost 40 years, for the development of creative design solutions for the strategic brands such as Nestlé, Nescafé, Maggi, Buitoni, Nesquik or KitKat. 
