It all started with a little black box.

When I joined The Fresh Market (TFM) back in 2017, they were already neck-deep in the process of executing a highly ambitious global rebrand.

One major component of the rebrand involved the complete visual overhaul of their entire Private Label (PL) line, a massive and ever-growing library of specialty and gourmet food items from across the globe.

At the time, several approved packaging concepts by Ontario-based Shikatani Lacroix Design were already printed and on shelves. The new Shikatani design system had been in the works for quite a while, and, at this point in our story, it was everything we could have hoped for - sexy, simple, bespoke, and specialty AF. Best of all, it didn’t just look good - it was functional. It worked.

Well. Mostly.

For some stuff.

At first.

Let me explain.

You see, we had a little problem.

It wasn’t obvious at first, but as time went on, and as our newborn brand continued to grow and mature, the problem came more and more menacingly into focus.

The problem was not as simple as how to design attractive and effective packaging. Sure, that was a problem, but it wasn’t the problem. The problem, dear reader, was one of scale and of harmony. And I’m not talking about music.

(Or maybe I am. Bear with me.)

Like a looming mountain emerging from the fog, the true scale of the rebrand and its many implications revealed themselves gradually, in real-time, on a day-by-day, project-by-project basis. Every day we discovered some new hole in the puzzle, every project found us bumping up against another wall in the maze, and - if you listened just right - you could hear the sound of disharmony warbling from the distant caves of that big, foggy mountain.

*Just look at all this crap. How is anyone supposed to make sense of it?*

The problem of scale was obvious. The sheer number and variety of existing PL products was vertigo-inducing, and that’s not even counting the growing list of new products currently in or actively planned for production.

The problem of harmony was how to design a packaging system that worked across multiple products, categories, and departments, while also connecting to, communicating with, supporting, and complimenting the new and evolving TFM brand. There was a kind of musical cohesion that had to happen across all these disparate arenas, and arranging them felt very much like arranging an orchestra for a symphony that hadn’t yet been written.

The Shikatani designs definitely satisfied the visual needs of many PL products, but we soon came to realize that the conversation was about much more than just packaging. Moreover, this was a conversation so big and so hugely complicated that we could really only have it internally.

Thus, using the Shikatani look as our starting point, we moved the PL project in-house, and the conversation began.

*This was gonna be one big conversation.*

The first challenge.

The first challenge was, of course, to recalibrate our thinking.

We couldn’t just think in parts; we had to think in wholes. We couldn’t think in products; we had to think in systems. In short, we had to adapt ourselves to the challenge, and the challenge was sweeping in scope. To demonstrate, consider the following:

The PL line then consisted of over 1,500 products across 8 categories
Any design elements introduced to PL packaging had to visually connect to ALL other in-store signage, such as display signs, sale tags, banners, stickers, video displays, and about a thousand other print and digital materials.
Not only that, but all of these systems had to integrate seamlessly with the overall TFM rebrand (which we were still figuring out.)
Oh, and!…the clock was ticking.

As we all know, the universal deadline in marketing is NOW, so with a mood board and a dream, we were off to the races.

As mentioned, I was still pretty new to TFM at this point, which is why it surprised me when I was asked to take a whack at some PL designs. I was still learning the ins and outs of the weekly sales flyer, so this was definitely a swift ass kick into the deep end. The good news (weirdly,) is that feeling uncomfortable, under pressure, and way out of my league is (weirdly!) one of my favorite feelings. There’s something exhilarating about it. It’s stressful, to be sure, but it’s that special kind of stressful that inspires rigorous action rather than floppy paralysis.

So, like a scrawny squire boy reaching for the legendary sword, I reached for my (slightly) less legendary stylus pen and got to work.

I was now officially on the road of discovery, and, to figure out where we should go next, I had to go back to…

The beginning.

All the original Shikatani designs were unified by a single, simple element - a little rectangular black box containing the product name.

You can see the remnants of these early designs on these chocolate bars, which were the first PL labels I ever created.

Concept after concept, mood board after mood board, for some reason I kept coming back to that stupid little box. I really liked that stupid little box, but why?

Well, three reasons, to be exact.

One thing I liked about it was that you couldn’t not see it, which is always a plus.
Another thing I liked about it was how it served as the heart of the composition, around which a body of design elements could be stylishly arranged.
The final thing I liked about it was how its utter simplicity grounded and anchored the more complicated visual elements surrounding it, serving as both launch pad and landing strip, guiding the eye where to look first and also where to look last.

The only thing that I didn’t like about it was what I tend to dislike about most things - in life as well as in art.

It didn’t go far enough.

DIGRESSION 1

Push it.

My go-to mantra for both personal and professional work is simple, but surprisingly hard to follow:

“Keep pushing it.”

This is not an original mantra. It was stolen from TFM’s impeccable and astonishingly talented creative director. Much like me today, he then was not satisfied until a design concept had been pushed all the way.

What does all the way mean? All the Way is the special place one arrives at when one can’t do anything more to a design. Its possibilities have been fully explored. Its potential has been fully realized. Every discussion has been had, every argument settled. It’s done.

The only way to know a design is right is to push it all the way, and the only way to know it’s been pushed all the way is when it’s right. It’s not done until it’s right, and it’s not right until it’s done.

Like I said. Simple. (But hard.)

END OF DIGRESSION

Here are some of the designs I pushed: 1.) Italian Olive Oil (2 variaties), 2.) Organic Honey, 3.) Balsamic Glaze (2 varieties), 4.) Frozen Pasta (7 varieties), 5.) Pasta Sauce (6 varieties), 6.) Cheese Straws (3 varieties), 7.) “Anything Goes” Sauce, 8.) Nom Nom Salsa (4 varieties)

For lack of a less snooty description, I might describe myself as a ”conceptual extremist”. As a snooty conceptual extremist, one of my biggest creative frustrations is when some clever element - whether in a design, a structure, or a story - doesn’t get pushed all the way. That is to say, when its logical extremes in either direction aren’t thoroughly explored and experienced. It feels half-realized. It feels half-finished. It feels like it gave up right before crossing the finish line. It feels like a story that stops just before the ending. Bottom line: it feels goddamn unsatisfying.

When I discover some ingenious little device, I want to witness all the different kinds of things it can do. I want to explore all of its limitations and possibilities. I want to see it bend, move, wiggle, grow, shrink, run, hop, dance, talk, and tell me a story.

This is probably why I’m completely obsessed with modular design systems. I think that if a thing is cool, it should do lots of cool things. As a matter of fact, I think doing lots of cool things is what actually makes a thing cool. If a thing doesn’t do cool things, and if it just sits there doing nothing, it’s not cool. It’s just a thing. And that’s dumb.

Anyway. Back to the box.

The box evolves.

After lots and lots of research, and lots and lots of thinking, and lots of getting frustrated and starting over and throwing piss baby temper tantrums and trying again, I started to see that Little Black Box as something more than just a box. Unexpectedly, bizarrely, perhaps delusionally, I started seeing it as, well…a person.

Not a person in the sense that it had arms and legs and obnoxious social media opinions, but a person in the sense that it could have an identity, a personality, and a distinctive voice. With that voice, it could tell me about more than just what some product is called. It could tell me a story. Not just with text, but with badges and awards, with evocative flavor notes, with facts about its regional origins, and with compelling and truthful statements about what makes it special. In other words, the box could tell me an authentic story about its value.

To illustrate, check out these magical storytelling labels I designed.

*Instead of just describing flavor cues, why not show them?*

*Regional badges, flags, and awards tell the true story of a product’s quality.*

Better still, the box could serve as a kind of unifying and centralizing device for all other design elements, such as photography and illustration. Instead of just statically loitering around the box with nothing better to do, these elements could now interact with it in lots of playful and meaningful ways - framing it, decorating it, overlapping it, and subtly pointing toward significant sections of copy.

You can see these dynamics at play in the following packages I designed.

*Notice how the overlapping foods point to their own flavor descriptions.*

The box was simple but oh-so versatile. It could be big or it could be small. It could be wide or it could be tall. It could say a lot, or it could say just enough. In other words, the box was beginning to do what I always wanted it to do…i.e., everything.

Little did I know, everything is exactly what it would go on to do.

The Little Box that Could.

As it turns out, that stupid, simple, unremarkable little box soon became the centerpiece of not just PL packaging, but pretty much all TFM branding materials across all platforms.

Why? Because, now, (finally,) it worked.

As in, actually worked. On pretty much everything. It worked on sales signs, display signs, banners, billboards, email, direct mail, and even the website. The Little Box that Could ended up being the unlikeliest of solutions to a tremendous number of design challenges.

For just a few examples, check out these display signs I made. Tell me that’s not a useful little box.

Of course, not everyone loved it.

And I mean, I get it. It’s just a box. To some people, the solution was too simple. Basic, even.

I remember during one company-wide meeting, our CEO read out several employee-submitted suggestion cards in front of the whole team (who thought this was a good idea?). One of the suggestion box commenters came down pretty hard on our hard-fought PL designs. The main complaint? It was mean, but reasonable: the Little Black Box wasn’t special enough. That is to say, its utility in solving a wide range of design problems came at the expense of (in our critic’s opinion) cheapening the brand.

While I genuinely empathized with that opinion, and understood where it was coming from, I did have to respectfully disagree.

Thankfully, so did our CEO.

Thankfully, so did our customers.

Within the first year of unveiling the new PL designs, sales jumped 10% and added over $8M in revenue.

More original designs: 1.) Clamshell Salads (multiple varieties), 2.) Brown Rice, 3.) Jasmine Rice, 4.) Organic Italian Olive Oil, 5.) Organic Water Crackers (Original and Cracked Pepper), 6.) Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce, 7.) Organic Honey, 8.) Organic Coconut Flour.

DIGRESSION 2

So…about that font.

Real talk. I had my own “suggestion box” moment with my own label designs. Let’s talk about that script font you’ve been seeing all over these labels.

It’s called Just Lovely and I think it’s just…not.

Well, okay, it IS. On its own. (In isolation.) As an accent font, it’s just lovely (see what I did there?), but I never felt like it was the ideal choice for our main display font. Me, I was always more of a Domaine Sans kinda guy (and speaking of, have you SEEN how good Klim Typer Foundry is? Doesn’t that just make you sick?)

Anyway. This is neither here nor there. I just wanted to get it off my chest.

END OF DIGRESSION 2

The second challenge.

Package design is fun. And hard. (In that order.)

Package design is fun because a package is a 3-dimensional canvas with nearly unlimited storytelling potential. Much like with our friend the black box, I had lots of fun pushing the possibilities of our many 3D canvases, albeit within the parameters of TFM brand standards.One particularly resilient obsession of mine was with seamless patterning. The idea that you can continue a visual thought across multiple units (called SKUs), and then mix-and-match their elements, was highly addictive. And I was hooked.

Here’s an example of a continuous pattern I made.

During the holiday season, these stock and broth boxes were traditionally merchandized side-by-side on a massive, highly-visible floor display. Knowing this, I wanted to maximize the wow factor by designing them in such a way that - no matter how they were arranged - they would visually link together.

Package design is hard because, let me tell you, it’s A LOT.

There are die lines (often complicated and in foreign languages), printing specs (often complicated and in foreign languages), and nutrition labels. Also, okay, hold up, stop right there, spit that kiwi passion fruit guava vape out of your mouth and listen, because let’s talk about nutrition labels. Do you know about nutrition labels? Let me tell you something about them. Nutrition labels SUCK.

As an agency of the federal government, the FDA has a LOT of nutrition label guidelines. How many is a lot? Try 132 pages of rules, regulations, and legal minutiae. And that’s just one document. (Of many.)

As we dove head-first and floatie-free into the dark depths of package design, the horrible fact soon dawned on us that someone would have to cobble together all this FDA gobbledygook into a format more-or-less comprehensible to your average designer (who, I can confirm from personal experience, usually suffers from small-attention-span-energy).

For reasons which are still unclear to me, I decided to accept this call to adventure. So, partnering with our (incredible) in-house food scientist, we poured over all 132 of those agonizingly dull government agency pages, designing and refining until a simplified and straight-forward reference guide was produced for all to enjoy. (JK. No one enjoyed it.)

All in all, my long Tolkien-esque journey through the dark forests, blizzarding mountains, and magma-flanked hellscapes of FDA nutritional guidelines was indeed a great and epic adventure…which I hope to never go on again.

Life after the box.

During my time with TFM, I’d go on to produce tons and tons of PL package labels. I can’t possibly know the exact amount, but it was definitely in the hundreds (plural).

I made boxes and bottles and cans and tubs, clamshells and tins, bags and wraps, die cuts and foldouts - many from international vendors, many with unique printing and nutrition label guidelines, and all constantly shifting and scattering across multiple SKUs and categories. This was all on top of the hundreds of everyday projects that came tumbling in, to and fro every second of every day, day-in and day-out in the fast-paced, non-stop, all-hands-on-deck, now-now-now world of grocery retail, which moves at the speed of competition, never slows down, and never stops.

Then, as now, I was kind of a jack-of-all trades, producing thousands of materials across multiple platforms, including every conceivable form of print advertising, motion graphics, and video.

Here’s a (very) small selection of some video and motion graphics projects I banged out.

This was a crazy fun video that I got to write, direct, edit, and even act in! (I’m the skeleton hand.)

Styling by Alex Blake, videography by Daniel Ray Photography, directed by Alex Blake and Pierce Foster

One of my motion graphics projects that I think turned out nicely.

Videography by Daniel Ray Photography, edited by Pierce Foster.

To say that all this was a wild ride would be a bombastic understatement, but, looking back, I have to admit the ride was fun as hell.

The Fresh Market allowed me the unique opportunity to experience every facet of every level of the design pipeline, as well as the many circuitous ins and outs of the production process.

More valuable still, I got to work alongside and learn from some of the smartest and most phenomenally talented marketers, creative directors, social media managers, stylists, and designers I’ve ever had the privilege of collaborating with.

My journey with TFM challenged me, pushed me past my limits, occasionally broke me, and ultimately gave me lasting confidence and drive as a creative professional.

The Fresh Market is founded, perhaps more than anything, on the experience of being there - in the store, on the ground, in-person, immersed in the smells, sounds, and flavors of excellence.

In that sense, my own experience with TFM was no different from that of a first-time visitor. At first, I was overwhelmed by how much was going on. After that, I began to explore and discover fascinating items that I never knew existed. Finally, I left with something exceptional that can’t be found anywhere else.

NOTE: The author has not been financially compensated by The Fresh Market, Inc. for his positive, good looking, and amazingly well written endorsement - however, should they choose to pay him for more shameless, wishy-washy, ass-kissing longform blog articles, he will gladly oblige.

The Curious Case of the Fresh Market and its Little Black Box of Wonders