Safeway: Open Nature

Role: Design Director, Art Director, Design

Safeway's private label brand, Open Nature, is all about transparency. Made with the highest quality, all-natural ingredients, it has quickly become one of the store's most visible brands and popular alternative to mainstream and boutique health food brands. In an effort to prove it has nothing to hide, the visual system features a strong color-coded tear, which represents a "tearing back" of misleading language or hidden ingredients often found on other brands. In most cases, the tear reveals a literal window to the naturally beautiful product inside. But where photography was necessary, it's kept simple, un-propped, and displays the product in raw form.

My challenge with these three segments: How do we maintain brand concept consistency when the raw form of the product is visually unappetizing or needs to compete in a category known for decadence and hyper realistic graphics?

Frozen Seafood: With this segment, I made the decision to move away from the previous "windowed" bag and feature photography to gain more control over product differentiation and appetite appeal. I also had to account for the addition of 5 new SKUs. Because there is almost zero visual difference or appetite appears in the look of frozen fish, I decided to style raw cuts with minimal propping. I chose ingredients based on common ways to prepare each fish variety, as well as to provide a pop of color and extra SKU differentiation. Finally, careful sourcing of a natural surface and background with use of daylight vs. artificial lighting brought everything together. 

Dessert Pints: The biggest challenge in this category was differentiating between 4 sub segments (Ice Cream, Gelato, Sorbet, Frozen Greek Yogurt), each with many flavors, while capitalizing on the latest "natural trends". After choosing to change the container from opaque to clear for a stronger brand message, we differentiated each sub segment by varying typography style. In order to accommodate the flavor cues and maintain an extra layer of brand consistency, the tear was brought back into the design architecture in white, serving as a consistent background that wouldn't distract from the natural product.

Gelato Bars: As a new segment for Open Nature, I was able to maintain consistency in the brand by borrowing from the design language established for the Gelato segment of pints. However, this category demanded richer colors and extreme appetite appeal to compete with the popular non-natural brands on the shelf.