Ube Birthday To You!

I got my mom an Ube themed birthday gift this year. Personally I hadn’t ever seen the flavor Ube until I was living here on the West Coast and so I thought there was a good chance that this flavor and its vibrant purple color would be novel to my mom too.

In case you’re in the dark…

Ube is a Yam. Yes, a gorgeous, purple Yam. It’s known not only for its audacious appearance but also for its sweet and nutty flavor. Filipino in origin, Ube is quickly becoming a favorite flavor here on the West Coast. I mean, really, who doesn’t want to have something tasty and purple just for the hell of it?

The Ube latte mix pictured below is one of the items that I found and added to my Mom’s Ube themed birthday gift.

TBH, I didn’t think that the packaging was very compelling, but I liked the simplicity of the product and so I took a chance on it.

Then I decided to take a stab at redesigning the packaging. This is my take on a design refresh for the Ube Latte box.

I decided to exclusively use and remix Tea Drop assets to create the new design. Luckily they had some nice product photos to work with on their website.

Aside from attention grabbing color and hierarchy choices, one of the most impactful decisions I made in the process of updating the design was simplifying the text content. Honestly, this is often a recommendation that comes up when I get to work closely with clients.

Clients often try to maximize value by requesting as much information as possible be featured in a design. But in reality, simplifying text content allows us to place more emphasis on elements in the design that matter. And doing this allows for better flow and ultimately comprehension of the information that is presented. This is super important, especially in busy environments with a lot of competing products.

For example, in the new design I’m able to place a lot of visual emphasis on the fact that the company is making an impact by helping provide clean water for people in need. This piece of information could easily be a tipping point between whether this product stays on the shelf or lands in the shopping basket.