I had the pleasure of attending an incredible auction on Saturday – a vintage packaging and advertising auction at Bamfords Auctioneers in Derby, UK.

Through work my life is consumed by 21st Century FMCG packaging, consequently I rarely get an opportunity to study the work done by my design industry predecessors – well what an insight this was.

Quite possibly some of the most evocative, beautiful and well crafted packaging I’ve come across – ironic as I seem to spend so much of my spare time wandering the aisles of supermarkets studying today’s packaging. Most of the packaging I saw at the auction could comfortably compete on the supermarket shelves of today with regards to ‘shelf impact’. Yes, there was little ‘brand understanding’ but crikey they had presence!

Given the limited resources the designers of ‘yester-year’ had compared to the packaging designers of today, these artisans have produced some of the most stunning and unique typography/illustrations.

I have promised myself another fix of vintage packaging nostalgia with a visit Robert Opie’s Museum of Brands in the coming weeks.

Its difficult to date exactly when many of these items below were produced. They vary somewhat but for the most they’re between the 1910 and 1940.

Some point of sale items:

Early example of 3D POS:

Love this ‘larder’ for Nestle’s evaporated milk:

And last of all, I couldn’t help myself, I put a bid on these little beauties, a collection of early 20th century Whisky bottles – one of which is still full! I’m guessing its whisky inside – certainly don’t fancy trying it…

Blog Post – Mark Grey.

The second release from the Gordon & MacPhail’s Generation range is the Glenlivet 70 year old whisky.

Each bottle is beautifully presented in a stunning tear-shaped hand-blown crystal decanter with an elegant British Hallmarked silver stopper. The decanter nestles in a sterling silver base and is framed in a handmade box, crafted in Scotland using Scottish Elm.

Only 100 bottles were made. So something of this beauty, with a very high quality whisky and limited run is surely worth the £13,000 price tag….

- Blog Post by Gary Eley -

Fashion designer Christian Audigier, of the Ed Hardy brand and his own fashion label, has designed a range of wines dubbed “Le Vin Cool”, designed to attract new drinkers and to show that wine can be playful.

The normally sedate French wine market takes a big twist thanks to Christian Audgier. Taking his instantly recognisable style, inspired by rock ‘n’ roll street style, tattoos and Hollywood glam, Audigier has shrink wrapped 5 different designs on to a variety of wines.

Normally seen in the coolest, most exclusive bars, clubs and hotels around the world, I didn’t hesitate to pick one up when I saw them in… Costco! An opportunity not to be missed as I believe this will inspire other designers to break with traditional wine labels and create maximum impact and make a statement.

- Blog Post by Gary Eley -

Images from the article, courtesy of Connxchange.com

When Build got the brief from Icon Magazine they already knew about the government’s proposal for unbranded or plain packaging. They chose to approach the design almost from a non-design perspective. Stripping out any superfluous design elements and taking it down to an ultra-“generic” feel.

Marlboro Lights

A lesson in reductionism. OCR-B, a monospace typeface, was chosen for its clarity and genericism. The QR code [beneath the barcode] links to a government website on the effects of smoking and how to quit. They introduced a very small strip of colour to help indicate from a small distance the cigarettes’ brand – for two reasons: to aid people selling the cigarettes and to add a small level of anti-piracy measures (the colour would be foiled).

Marlboro Reds

Marlboro Menthol

Text from the article, courtesy of ICON magazine.

We recently had a visit from Mel Holme from Fedrigoni UK. Mel was kind enough to give us one of these very cool 2011 desk calendars.The box within a box concept uses the familiar function to that of a Russian doll.

Every other month has been individually die-cut and each one has been litho printed with metallic silver ink on a Komori B2 press and hand finished with an envelope fold base.

The Sirio Colour paper range is available in 24 colours, nine weights and two embossing effects, and can be used for a variety of luxury design applications. It is also elemental chlorine free.

The Calendar was designed by Paul Betowski, a recent graduate from Cornwall University as part of the creative brief set by Fedrigoni UK for the YCN (Young Creative Network) Student awards.

With the release of these Calendars Fedrigoni UK are holding a Golden Box contest… if you find a gold box nestled within the other boxes you can claim your prize – A 16GB Apple iPad.

…unfortunately we weren’t so lucky.

That said, we had fun pulling all the boxes out and reviewing the finishes and materials.

Blue Nectar have recently complete the new identity and website for Derby based business coaching firm, Clear Coach.

Clear Coach provides professional one-to-one coaching to corporate leaders and business owners.

The Director of Clear Coach, Steve Kennedy had a strict colour palette within which he briefed us to work, the three central colours from within the rainbow. The brand identity had to be modern and clutter free, with a website which he was able to easily amend and update via a WordPress based CMS.

Check out the website ClearCoach

Blue Nectar recently complete the website design for the brand Stasia, a small e-commerce site that sells hand finished, limited edition slippers.

The brief was to maintain the existing branding but add an essence of ’boutique chic’ to help sell a growing collection of modern female footwear online. The website was designed to grow with the company and as such makes use of a CMS build – enabling the team at Stasia to add products from their end with ease.

We were tasked through the design brief to making the whole customer buying experience a pleasure and above all, encourage regular repeat purchases. So far its been a great success with a large number of sales being made during the lead up to this frantic Christmas period.

Check out the website here Stasia.com

Blue Nectar’s No.1 is a limited edition ale designed by ourselves and brewed by one of our local brewery clients in the city of Derby, UK.

The purpose of the ale was to produce a product that captures the essence of everything we do, creating compelling brands and putting them into beautiful packaging.  The self initiated brief required us to create a design that stood out from the current offering that is seen within the UK ales market, whilst making what is often perceived as a rather old fashioned product more contemporary.

The core of Blue Nectar’s work is within the alcoholic drinks arena – making the production of a finely packaged limited edition ale an ideal platform to showcase our services. 300 bottles of Blue Nectar’s No. 1 were produced, each of them hand dipped in specially coloured wax, matching our brand colours. The medallion placed onto the neck compliments the surface texture of the wax cap very neatly. The digitally printed label onto GF Smith textured stock was blind embossed to create the contrast in surface finish.

Having recently exhibited at the Packaging Innovations Show in London we distributed the ale as a calling card to prospect clients. This worked to great effect and helped generate many quality leads.

The ale itself is a delectable, easy drinking 4.8%, malty traditional amber beer.

Photography courtesy of Chris Howard at Cactus Images

We’ve had some great feedback passed onto us about our little self promotional booklet we produced recently. So much so, I thought I’d upload a couple of photos.

The 20mm wide belly band has the logo embossed into 135 gsm Cool Blue GF Smith Colourplan stock, with a fine linen emboss. The smooth finish of the logo offset against the linen embossing creates a beautiful contrast.

The individually die cut end cards were 270 gsm Dark Grey GF Smith Colourplan stock with the same fine linen emboss.

The concertina fold on the inside was digitally printed onto uncoated 170 gsm white silkboard.

Last week saw us exhibit for the first time at the Packaging Innovations Exhibition at the London Business Design Centre in Islington. A slightly overwhelming experience considering we’re new to the exhibition arena, the logisitcs involved in shipping all our wares safely down to the show was quite daunting. That said, we got it all down there without a hitch, and the show went really well.

The show itself was very interesting with many exhibitors from both the design and production side of the packaging industry attending. Many of the exhibitors were able to teach us a thing or two about improvements within packaging production and manufacture, all of which we will be incorporating into our design thinking.

Blue Nectar received a lot of positive feedback from people attending the show, both for our stand and our approach to client projects. Our production knowledge was a key selling point throughout the show, the fact that we ensure that all our design concepts can be produced and aren’t just pretty pictures went down really well.

Having gained the ‘exhibiting’ experience and met some very influential people within the industry, the actual exhibition is only the first phase of the journey. Its now when the hard work begins, contacting the leads and following up enquiries.