Having spent 25 years in the marketing/printing business, it's important to me that our store banner and packaging have the same "feel" and appearance. The Minikins (our bread-and-butter line) inspired our logo with their packing boxes.
We originally had small wooden boxes//baskets in mind for packing. It looked great and felt impressive in your hand, but it shot the shipping/packing-materials cost through the roof. Not only did the wooden boxes add to the cost of the item, but they sometimes bumped our shipping costs beyond the cost of the Minikin itself. (Not to mention that it buried any chance for selling to the UK. That did it, since our Poirot Minikin is popular in the UK, and we don't want to make it difficult for those buyers to shop in our Peppermint Toes store.) So, we scrapped the whole idea and assembled a great combination of one lightweight paper-maiche box inside a bubble-wrap envelope.
Minikins are deservedly vain and don't like to be flattened or have water thrown at them. Their begging for a say in the packaging nearly drove us crazy. They insisted on special delivery in an armoured Brinks truck, but we nixed that when we found out that you can't drive from Ohio to England. In the end, we came up with packaging suitable to both us and them, attractive but cost-effective.
Here's how it goes. The Minikins are carefully wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a small paper-maiche box. The box is "sealed" with a paper band. For protection during shipping, the whole of that is then placed in a 6x9" ziploc. Into the kraft bubble-lined envelope, and they're off to their new home.
That brings us, full circle, back to the banner design. One look at the cute box with its paper band, and we knew that the banner would have to imitate the finished product. Simply done. Lay the "shipping band" artwork on a paper-like background, and -- voila -- our own "brand".
Philippians 2:3-11
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