Packaging News

We have been so excited to write this blog since the start of the year – there is so much packaging news to share and it feels like companies are getting more and more innovative every day (truly it feels like we hear about a new product once a week and keep editing this post, but it’s time to finish… for now)!

There is an undeniable consensus that we have a huge plastic problem and OVER half of all plastic pollution is from packaging. [source]

There is a movement to place more pressure on manufacturers to take back their packaging and let them deal with the burden of all the trash they’re producing to bring their products to market. For years, manufacturers of products with plastic packaging have actually touting their recyclability, but buzzwords like “recyclable” have begun to mean absolutely nothing (OK fine, it’s *something* - “recyclable” plastic gets one star). To even begin to make a dent, we have to stop producing the plastic in the first place because we have nowhere and no one to recycle it all. What we really need are products with compostable packaging or zero waste.

‘Loop’ is the kind of idea that gets me crazy excited

A coalition of giant brands is promising to change how we shop, with a new zero-waste platform. Loop will launch its first pilots this year: “While recycling is critically important, it is not going to solve waste at the root cause,” says Tom Szaky, CEO and cofounder of TerraCycle, a company that is known for recycling hard-to-recycle materials, and one of the partners behind the project.
– Fast Company [read more here]

I’m not the only one excited… there’s even more Loop news here:

"By mid-May, products from Loop will initially be available online to customers in Paris … and … in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. TerraCycle is finalizing grocery partnerships in the U.S. and Toronto, adding distribution through London’s Tesco later this year, and targeting Tokyo in 2020. Loop will collect a refundable deposit that customers will get back when they return their containers. UPS will pick up the empties for no additional charge."

Tiny Products, Big Culprit: Health & Beauty Packaging

The HBC/HBA industry (health & beauty care/health & beauty aids) has huge strides to make in this area and some companies are already taking the lead.

Lush has a “naked” line of products with no packaging at all and they are gaining in popularity, buzz, and market share. “When we can’t eliminate packaging completely (like in the case of shower gels or gift boxes), we use only recycled, recyclable, reusable or compostable materials, like our post-consumer recycled plastic bottles and biodegradable bags.” Read more about their fresh take on packaging: When it Comes to Packaging, Less is More & Reduce Packaging Waste with Lush

Lush also accepts their pots back as well and will give you a free face mask when you bring in five (see 5 Pot Program).

Austin, Texas-based cosmetics company Everyday Minerals also takes back their empty packaging, and will send you a free full-size blush in exchange for 12 empties (plus, their makeup is vegan, sustainable, and cruelty-free too). Read more about the company’s values here.

The Dirty Business of Cleaning Products

Think about some of the biggest pieces of plastic you put in your recycling bin - laundry soap and other cleaning product bottles are probably some of the worst offenders.

Home cleaning product startup cleancult is selling its soaps and cleaners in milk cartons, which we think is really cool. (In fact, a LOT of things that are typically sold in plastic packaging could be sold in paper cartons. Find alternatives – they exist!)

This clothing tag is actually a dissolving detergent sample from Unilever; unfortunately it’s only being trialled in Beirut for now, but we love seeing out-of-the-box ideas like this and wouldn’t be surprised to see more things like this in the future.

So what does all this mean for design?

There will be cost variations and printing limitations for manufacturers to consider when planning to switch packaging materials. Let’s face it: plastic is cheap and so are plastic labels - we don’t expect those to go away anytime soon. But we do expect to see a lot more brands make the move to paper, glass, and aluminum packaging.

Designers need to be aware of how their perfectly-picked colors will print on natural paper stock or cardboard vs. bleached white paper, or how the colors will need to be altered to achieve the desired effect on aluminum or metal. We’ve also been noticing folks having fun with their barcode shapes lately (Kodiak Cakes and Mother Beverage shown here).

MORE PACKAGING NEWS:

Eleven companies take major step towards a New Plastics Economy

Eleven leading brands, retailers, and packaging companies work towards 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025 or earlier. Amcor, Ecover, evian, L’Oréal, Mars, M&S, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Walmart, and Werner & Mertz – together representing more than 6 million tonnes of plastic packaging per year.

The world’s largest packaged food company will ditch single-use plastic

Nestlé will say goodbye to straws beginning this year, and some plastic bottles by 2025, but hopefully we’ll see an even greater commitment from the company soon. Either way, when you produce as much plastic packaging as Nestlé, something is better than nothing for now.

Trader Joe's plans to cut one million pounds of plastic from its stores as soon as possible

Milkmen are returning to London as millennials order glass milk bottles in a bid to slash plastic waste

Client Spotlight: Cloud Creative Events

We first began working with modern luxury wedding planner Cloud Creative Events a few years ago, the way we start working with many of our small business clients – on a single small project. She had created her own website, as many solopreneurs do, and got in touch with us for a little SEO treatment, which went really well.

As Cloud Creative has grown, we’ve implemented several short rounds of website improvements over the years to expand on the site’s content and reflect their growing team and portfolio.

In the last six months though, we’ve been working with Cloud Creative a lot more. Owner KC Cloud was ready to make some big moves, so in that time we have redesigned their logo, made several more website updates (especially to expand the portfolio and publicity pages), and we’ve also updated their pricing booklet and created new business cards for KC and her team – all without complicated and expensive design “packages” since we just track our time.

We couldn’t be more proud – take a look!

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Updated Website:

New Business Cards:

Updated Pricing Booklet:

Top 5 Things to Know About Working With a Graphic Designer

It’s not easy to know how to work with creative types like graphic designers, so we’re sharing our top 5-ish tips we wish potential clients knew:

1. Just because we’re “creative” doesn’t mean we aren’t professional.

Not all creatives have blue hair and facial piercings (but to each their own) or sleep late and work all night. At Green Apple Lane, for instance, each of us offices from home, but we have dedicated real offices in our homes, and we manage our time really well. Potential clients sometimes ask, “What types of clients do you serve?” to which we proudly reply that we work with all types of clients from all types of industries: lawyers, healthcare professionals, car dealerships, luxury wedding planners, auto mechanics, cake bakeries, political campaigns, dairy farms, private schools, beauty products, professional photographers, art classes, funeral services, real estate, authors, and the list goes on. This has made us chameleons, or Janes-of-All-Trades, because we have to dive head-first into all of these fields, and we love it! And depending on the client, we’ve had meetings in board rooms, coffee houses, garages, or just over email and phone. We’ve met in flip flops and business suits. We’re in the business of whatever your business does, however you do it.

2. Tell us the issue, not what you think the solution should be.

Design solves problems, so it’s our job to come up with the perfect solution. When you tell us the problem and the solution, you run the risk of severely limiting our thinking and boxing us in, which is a bummer, because then you don’t really get to realize the full benefit of our expertise. We love it when you tell us “what” and leave the “how” up to us. And try not to make your feedback too specific. Actually take a minute to think about what it is that you don’t like about something, and share that with us. For instance, instead of deciding “It should be in red,” (which is telling us the solution), say, “The color isn’t right, I’d like it to be more bold/in-your-face.”

3a. The design isn’t for you, it’s for your customer…

More often than not, the opinions of whether you, your spouse, your child, or even your designer PERSONALLY like a design are completely irrelevant, unless we are your ideal customer (and it’s highly unlikely that all of us are your customer, unless you’re in front of a grocery store selling Thin Mints).

3b. So please don’t tell us what your spouse thinks.

If there’s one thing that really gets under our skin, this is it… “I showed the design to my ‘insert relationship here’ and they said didn’t like it.” First off, while this person is probably super smart and amazing, the designs are based off of your direction, because you know your business and your clients best, not your spouse (unless this person is a business partner, in which case, their input should have been considered from the beginning). This person has not been privy to all the conversations we’ve had leading up to the design and this is likely their first time to hear about the project, so honestly, their opinion is not really relevant to the project. One caveat: if this person brings up actual relevant feedback or questions to you and you agree, feel free to pass those along to us, but please just pass them off as your own thoughts and opinions and don’t pawn it off on your hubby or your kindergartner.

4. That person who created that thing for you a long time ago was not an actual designer.

Sometimes clients have a previous experience with a “graphic designer,” (read: someone with a bootleg copy of Photoshop), and their expectations were shattered somewhere along the way, so they’re feeling understandably hesitant to work with a designer again. But a professional graphic designer spends years learning software programs, typefaces, color theory, marketing strategy, and how to decode people’s feelings and turn those feelings into visual imagery. If the only file types you were provided with at the end of the project were jpgs with white backgrounds, that is a tell-tale sign you worked with someone masquerading as a designer. In that case, you have every reason to feel salty about the experience, but please know this probably-well-intentioned person was simply a novice at best, and you should have a completely different experience working with a professional. Now if you were provided files embedded inside a Word document, on the other hand, this person was a monster and you were lucky to escape (a little designer humor).

5. Finally, the cardinal rule: Don’t ask if you can take us out to “pick our brain.”

This is what we do for a living and we LOVE it, but we take our craft seriously and we also have bills to pay like everyone else. We charge by the hour, just like an attorney, for our time and expertise, so don’t ask us to give up 1-2 billable hours to dispense that advice for free in exchange for a coffee or a salad (or even worse, “exposure”). Close friends and family are the most common offenders here, not typically a new contact, as this is a more informal “ask.” We love you, so if you want to have coffee and talk about your super cute kids, your stressful mother-in-law, or your new puppy, we’re all in, but if you want to talk shop, offer to pay us for our time first (and you may even be surprised with discounted rate), but don’t make it awkward by expecting it to be free.