Heineken launched a global design competition that we were happy to assist in. This year, in celebration of their 140th anniversary, Heineken will create an iconic bottle mixing their past with their future.
Students and aspiring designers can look at Heinekens design history and create their own submissions. Winners will get to go to Milan’s design week and the final selection will be considered by the jury (which includes Joshua Davis, the founders of Coolhunting and Pecha Kucha and Mark van Iterson, Heineken head of global design). One lucky designer will ultimately have his design immortalized on a future limited edition bottle that will be on the shelves in around 65 countries.
Heineken´s swedish team contacted Morgenland to assist in reaching out and connecting with the local design community. In order to get the message out and attractive the young designers of Sweden we designed their very own limited invitation kit, introduced the competition to design schools and generated PR to relevant business media around the competition. We also sent our Design Director on the road, to visit design schools and make ourselves available for questions, information and inspiration. If you think you can design a bottle for Heineken join in at http://morgenland.se/remix
At the moment we are working with some packaging design for our favourite cognac – Grönstedts. This is an anxiety producing process since the legacy of identity here includes a ground work from famous long time design legend Lars Hall, and further development from some pretty prestigious design agencies.
Not the mention the weight of a 187 year classic Swedish brand behind it all.
At the same time, the agency are also doing faster and smaller work, for some start up friends of ours. All in need of that defining identity that makes their brand clearer; and all in abundant supply of opinions, ideas and tastes of their own. Since design work often can be very emotional concerning the heart of the company and sometimes it´s active founders, there can be a lot of discussions around that specific logo proposal. In those moments we sometimes find it good to go back to some simple rules of basic logo design we have set up. Thought we might share it here:
• Dont copycat any popular logo and avoid any current logotrends
• The logo must have some connection to its business
• If the brand name is memorable you may include it in the logo
• Don ́t use more than 3 colors and never more than 2 fonts
• It has to be able to resize in all formats and work 1,2,4 color print
• Grandmothers must be able to read it
• Find and use some form of unique shape
• Avoid gradients, drop shadows, reflections, and all intricate details
• Test the logo in environments it will actually be used
• Do not attach a tagline to the original logo design
• And lastly – Folllow the above rules<
