The ubiquitous loaf of crusty bread is found everywhere, a food staple, the original slow food, artisanal in the hands of a craft baker, but in the world of branding it is very much a commodity.
Here in NYC it’s high art at Sullivan Street Bakery or Balthazar, both in baking and branding, but most often a more humble version is found in the hundreds of corner markets around the city. The loaves from the neighborhood bakeries that supply these corner markets, are often packaged in generic bakery bags, which belie the real story behind many of them.
Packaging is an quirky collection of clip art and visual cliche, oddly most of this bread comes from 4th or 5th generation family bakeries, rich with a history and authenticity that was not born from any focused branding effort. These simple and unpretentious packages are strangely endearing, yet one wonders if reimagined visual equities and a bit of design restraint would net packaging that would relate to a broader consumer audience. With this in mind we selected a small sampling of bakery bags and redesigned them. Our intent was to focus on retaining aspects of the original packages, while considering design elements that would help to build richer brand stories.
