What’s in a brand color?

Do you think it's best for a brand to have one main color they can truly own... or better to remain flexible on brand colors so their packaging system can stay nimble on shelf?

We recently had to answer this question during our rebrand work for ORIGIN® Creamery — and our answer was, "it depends".

In Origin's case, the old brand color was a rich CMYK black. This presented some technical printing challenges, and the lack of other colors within the brand made products hard to make out from one another in a retail environment. Replacing this uniform black was a challenge we were up for.

• To invoke a feeling of being out on rich pasture with the brand's heritage-breed cows, we selected a dark green brand color to replace the black hue the company had been using.

• Then we chose a panel of nature-inspired colors to tell the story of this Regenerative Organic Certified® dairy company who was growing its regeneratively managed acreage as part of its core mission. These muted natural hues are used on packaging in various ways to differentiate SKUs on shelf.

• Since Origin is all about going back to the original A2/A2 dairy that humans evolved to eat & farming using old-fashioned soil-forward practices, we created a range of brand illustrations in the new palette in a style reminiscent of printer's etchings on a letterpress.

When all of these elements are combined, what you see is a graphic system designed to showcase a dairy brand that cares as much about the land as they do the nutrition in their products. What's best for you is real organic food, produced the regenerative way (as nature intended). This color system does justice to Origin's mission to improve dairy & nourish people, one day at a time.

We're grateful for the opportunity to work with such a great client!