Ever feel like you have problems that no one has any solutions to? Help Remedies may have an answer for you.

Don’t know what to wear?

Never been kissed?

Or maybe you just have a song stuck in your head?

Help Remedies have collected humorous (yet helpful) answers to all these questions and lots more. The brand is known for its elegant, minimal design and eco-friendly packaging, but they’ve also come up with great ways to get their customers involved in the brand.  The Help I’m Bored page is amusing and a great way to start a Monday morning.  It also gives a good idea of what the brand stands for: making it simple to solve simple health issues.

This weekend I finally got a closer look at Target’s relaunched private label brand, Up & Up. Private brands have a tricky task in distinguishing themselves from the national brand competition. One common approach is to design packaging that works cross-catagory, so the brand has a consistent look from the electronics section to the frozen food aisle. The downside to this approach is the design often appears generic. And while I like the look of Up & Up, it is admittedly generic. They’ve combatted this with smart copy lines on the front of each package. Boring paper towels become “puddle busters,” standard aloe vera gel is “after sun aaaaah,” and just like that the cheaper brand becomes the smarter brand.

While designers tend to focus on the look of the brand, the voice is just as important. It can elevate everyday brands and help clearly define a brand’s position in the market.

On July 25th the Tru Beverage Company announced that they will be bringing the fictitious beverage Tru Blood to a store near you. The beverage has been made popular by HBO’s vampire soap opera “True Blood.” On the television series, vampires have been able to “come out of the closet” and assimilate with humans because they no longer need to feed on them as their source of sustenance; they can drink the synthetic blood alternative, Tru Blood.

The carbonated blood orange based beverage promises to feature the same intensely red-colored product fans see on the show; however, I can’t imagine the consistency will be nearly as thick! Either way it’s a great way for fans to take home a piece of the brand aura.

These days, it seems people have gotten really creative with their beer drinking. The Go Plate, much like The Ashhole, (which MSLK designed the packaging for) can transform your empty beer bottle, can or cup into an instant commodity.

While The Ashhole fits on top of empty bottles and converts them into an ashtray, The Go Plate fits around your beverage receptacle of choice and as a result, allows you to carry your food and drink in one hand. It’s pretty clever and pretty practical; however, I don’t suppose it will help get rid of any beer bellies any time soon.

-Mariana G.

As Reactions continues to evolve, we are pleased to announce the addition of guest bloggers to our blog. This post features Mariana Gorn, our trend-spotting, beer-swilling, intern. 

I’ve become HD-obsessed. I refuse to watch anything on television unless it’s at full 1080 resolution. I’ve also recently purchased a digital camera which shoots HD movies and have become so enamored with all the detail it captures, that can barely care what it is that I am shooting. (So much so, my hard drive is petitioning for an upgrade).

The flip side to seeing everything in crisp resolution is that you see, well, everything… especially the flaws. I’ve heard stories about famous actresses who cannot be cast because their bad acne now shows up clear as day on everyone’s living rooms due to the HD Revolution.

Naturally, there is a line of  make up to capitalize on this new reality and try to remedy it…

Since 1876 Anheuser-Busch products have been conceived and manufactured in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. Recently after feeling pressure that sales were not growing enough or that commanding 50% of the US beer market wasn’t good enough, the Busch family turned over the reigns to the Belgium based company, InBev. The sale was intended to increase A-B’s foothold in stronger and emerging beer markets such as Argentina, Brazil, Russia and Eastern Europe.

With all this in mind, I’ve become increasingly more and more upset that A-B — now after 133 years of American ownership — has decided to market their American Heritage first with the switch of  Budweiser’s tagline from “The King of Beers” to “The Great American Lager,” and more recently with the introduction of the new product, “Budweiser American Ale.”

Having a cold in the summer should be a crime, however seasonal allergies get the best of everyone and if you’ve got to curl up with a tissue box this June, I highly reccomend the new “Perfect Slice of Summer” Kleenex packaging for Target, illustrated by Hiroko Sanders. Talk about an affordable luxury, nothing brightens my day more than a fruity, clever, and beautiful Kleenex box.  I even love the dynamic shape, blended perfectly with the visual. Especially when my alternative options are packaged in blue grey swirls and “cottony soft” patterns. Egad! I personally hate tissues boxes so much we are toilet paper only household, but I will buy these—simply for the packaging.

I realize that picking on Tropicana’s ill-fated new branding has become as common as picking on AIG’s improperly compensated managers. However, I’m choosing to lambaste Tropicana here not because of aesthetics, but because of their incredibly poor and inconsistent graphic system.

A few weeks ago, Tropicana announced that they are pulling their controversial new packaging that hit the stores earlier this year. When we first saw the redesign, we had the same reaction much of the public did: yikes. The rebranding seemed to strip Tropicana from its identity and positioning in the market and leave us with a product that felt very generic, lacking an emotional connection.

As a designer, I’m interested in how the brand ended up in this spot. I stumbled across a video of Creative Director Peter Arnell, from the Arnell Group, defending his design to the press. In my opinion, he gets a bit too cerebral about what the design elements represent and loses site of the big picture (a very common design error). Click here to see how he defends his design (a.k.a. a designer’s worst nightmare).

Let’s be honest, the Japanese are geniuses with wacky innovations. I would be remiss if I didn’t share any of the crazy innovations Marc and I saw on our recent journey to Japan.

Let’s start with their innovations with the QR bar code. Designed to be  read quickly, these codes are now used everywhere from billboards to advertisements. You take a photo of one with your cell phone’s camera and then present that image at the store to be scanned as a coupon or as a ticket. Here’s a billboard in Tokyo that, when you take a photo, loads a special website on your phone.

There’s probably a very good reason why the Japanese are light-years ahead of the rest of us when it comes to cutting-edge graphics, although it’s not my job to speculate. Instead, I simply marveled at it all as I had the opportunity to wander the streets.

MSLK’s recent trip to Japan found us taking picture after picture of cool trends, colors, shapes, and patterns. These are things you needn’t go to a gallery or museum to see, either — they’re all around you — in subways, on buses, on sale in convenience stores, and all over the street.

Click below for some of our favorites…

It is with a tremendous amount of love that I write this post, having just returned from one of the most eye-opening (if not wallet-opening) trips in my life: a trip to Japan with Sheri.

We had an amazing time visiting shrines, temples, museums, and sampling the cultural riches from the streets of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagoya to small towns such as Kasugai and Owariashi.

I will leave Sheri’s more pragmatic nature to post things from the “high” road, and will walk you through some of the offbeat things which caught our eye from a decidedly “lower” road.

Hope you enjoy…

I know, I know… the only thing designers complain about more than corporate branding is corporate branding redesign. Both Pepsi and Tropicana unveiled new brand designs in the past few weeks. From the looks of it, the marketing department finally decided to modernize the brands, as designers across the world had hoped for years. Yes, we had been begging them to control all the starbursts, call-outs, dropshadows, glow effects, and whiz-bangs in their packaging. We had hoped for a controlled color palette and streamlined information. From the looks of it, they really did remove everything – including the spirit of the brands.

On a recent trip to Whole Foods, something caught our eye that was so incredibly simple, so obvious, that it made us wonder why it hasn’t always been this way: A biodegradable flowerpot.

Instead of buying flowers in the standard plastic pot which you inevitably dispose of after transplanting the plant into your garden, this eco-friendly, unbelievably easy solution literally embodies the concept of sustainable design, the pot returns to soil itself. No mess, no fuss. Just dig a hole, and set it in. Even the tag is biodegradable making doing good practically effortless.

If you want to keep these on your stoop, that’s fine, too. In most cases, the pot will outlast the flowers. Once you’re done, simply put whole thing into your compost bin.

Why isn’t everything designed this way?

Recently at the HBA Expo, I attended a lecture by Jane Bickerstaffe, the director of INCPEN, the Industry Council for Packaging & the Environment. When discussing innovation in sustainable packaging, one can usually expect to hear the same topics covered, reduction of the packaging weight/thickness, use of recycled or bio materials, reduction of overall packaging components. However, Jane wanted to point out something entirely new. The carbon footprint of the packaging of a product is really just one tiny spec in the overall life cycle and eco-footprint of the product it contains. In short, packaging protects far more resources than it expends by proportion. So if you reduced the thickness of your packaging and the product inside became damaged as a result, the amount you sought to save would be wasted by 10 or 20 fold.

I’m noticing a thread of drug inspired Chocolate packaging out there. Bochox by Bloomsberry & Co. and then last night, a chocolate syringe at Max Brenner. The syringe is totally over the top, you actually squirt the liquid chocolate into your mouth. It was, however, pretty tasty. If you come across a chocolate ‘fix’ send a pic of it my way, let’s see how many we can collect.

The other day I bought what I thought was the same-old, same-old Ritz crackers. Wrong! Obviously a wayward design elf at Nabisco took it upon themselves to have a little fun.

You’re looking at the back… the front is still a bit schlocky, yet the fact that this minimal design passed through the ranks without being compromised is actually quite amazing.

This week I noticed a new Kashi product on the shelves. They’ve introduced a new line of cereal called Kashi U, a “vitality cereal” that’s designed to strengthen five areas of the body: the heart, the immune system, bones, digestion, and the brain. Despite the virtues of a yet healthier Kashi, they’ve also made strides with their design on this venture. The box is made from 100% recycled paper (80% post consumer content). It’s printed with vegetable inks and manufactured with 100% windpower. The design isn’t so bad either…

Here is another posting about my parent’s amazing trip to Barcelona. After spending a few hours looking through their photos, it was clear to see that there was a trend: the city has a love affair going on with the color red. Is there really any better color to fall for?

My dad noted its prevalence and provided an edit for your viewing pleasure…

My parents have just returned from a trip to Barcelona and found this great bag they thought we’d like. Like it? More like love it. The strings of the handles become part of the line drawing.

In many ways, it reminds me of the gift tags we designed a few years back.