Brand Design, Packaging
Creative Director: Jeremy Ehn
Agency: Ideaville
Mariam Foods is a Portland food startup making flavorful, Ethiopian-style lentil dips to rival any old hummus at the market today. The design problem: To create a brand for a totally new food product that stays true to the founder's Ethiopian roots while enticing shoppers to toss it into their cart for the first time.
To solve this, we first conducted an audit of similar products in the refrigerator aisle and discovered there was space for a brand that told a deeper, cultural story about the flavors inside the package. We also found that space on the shelf was quite literally limited. Therefore, every inch of the package needed to be utilized to promote the brand.
I drew from folk iconography and natural elements of the region to create a visual system that told a story of Ethiopia, homeland of the Mariam Foods founder. I leveraged hand-drawn illustration to evoke the hand-craft so important to the history and economy of the region.
The playfulness of the drawings are also a nod to families and shoppers with children who, in market tests, saw the line of dips as a set to be collected. And the high contrast, large, unique shapes were some of the most recognizable on the shelf from a distance.
Role: Art Director, Designer, Illustrator
Creative Director: Jeremy Ehn
Agency: Ideaville