How is the Nongfu Spring Pack that won the international award?

[China Packaging Network News] "We really like the plan on the drawing, but it is too difficult to achieve it. For various reasons, we all later worried that it may not really be able to come." Then look back at the team designed for Nongfushanquan Product packaging, British designer Sarah Pidgeon still exclamation process is too complicated and long. From taking over projects to product proofing, they spent about two and a half years, which is very rare in packaging design.

Sarah Pidgeon is a partner of Horse Design, a British design studio. Before the establishment of the studio, she participated in the product packaging design for Nongfu Springs several times. But her studio is really famous, and she has also recently cooperated with the two sides - the farmer. Mountain spring glass bottled water packaging design.

In early 2015, Nongfu Spring introduced glass bottled water. The waterdrop-shaped glass bottle is painted with the image of typical animals and plants in Changbai Mountain of water sources, and is accompanied by relevant figures and text descriptions. Behind the figures is its special meaning.

This two-year mineral water packaging design almost swept all major prizes in packaging design in 2015, including the FAB Awards, the British D&AD Awards (Design and Art Design), and the International Packaging Design Award. The Pentawards Award, and the packaging design media The Dieline's annual award.

The British Design Award Design Week Awards also presented this product packaging package with the only packaging design award in 2015. It is considered "elegant and beautiful", "it is a collection, very concise, and the exquisite printing makes it look almost There are three-dimensional effects."

At the same time, Nongfu Spring has begun to appear in high-end dining venues, forums, and conferences, as well as through e-commerce sites. The price of the product 750ml specification is 45 yuan, which is higher than the price of all domestic bottled aquatic products in China.

For the moment, such a delicate and expensive mineral water is a different kind of bottled drinking water in China. How exactly did its design come from? We explored the story behind it.

Nongfu Springs Bottled Water

When Nongfu Spring first contacted Horse Studio, this project has been going on for a year. At that time, there was another design studio that was busy designing the product, but Nongfu Springs hopes to find newer ideas and ideas and commissioned Horse.

Their requirements are clear. Sarah Pidgeon recalls, “They want a beautiful and totally unique bottle that can express the fascinating view of the water source. The request is to have a specially customized bottle shape, and in order to reflect the purity of the water, it must be transparent and clear.” According to Zhou Zhenhua, assistant to assistant manager of Nongfu Springs, this glass bottle should let consumers know at a glance that it is a water rather than a wine. Second, it must reflect the cultural characteristics of Changbai Mountain and guide consumers to pay attention to these things.

In order to understand these requirements, Sarah Pidgeon and her team did a lot. It took a long time to think about design concepts. In the early stage, it put forward a series of problems to be solved. With market research, visiting companies, understanding the past products of Nongfu Springs and the design materials accumulated over the years, and then gradually solving these problems.

Nongfu Springs expressed the hope that Changbai Mountain plants and animals could appear on the bottle. They were invited directly to Changbai Mountain to experience the natural environment of the Moya Spring water source. “I can't imagine that if we didn’t go to Changbai Mountain, we could think of how great it was. There was inspiration and inspired our creation. When we returned to the studio, the positivity was completely mobilized.” This water source is located in a local nature. Within the reserve, the designers are there to study the native flora and fauna.

We cannot know if Sarah Pidgeon had the moment to get her to jump from her seat and say “Eureka!”. She did read some of the information given to her by Nongfu Spring, mainly about the data and facts about the water source. . It is said that these things gave Sarah inspiration.

“I remember one of them saying that this area was covered with snow for 270 days a year. We understand at a glance that this design should try to express all these interesting facts.” Sarah told the Curiosity Daily.

Thus, in the final plan, eight kinds of plants, animals and plants typical of Changbai Mountain appeared on the glass bottle to distinguish whether the product is bubble water. Illustrated for the packaging is the British illustrator Natasha Searston, her pen was born with a slowly moving northeast tiger, long-horned red deer, flying dragonfly, alert Chinese merganser; and in the bubble-free mineral water bottle body The pattern of hawthorn, red pine, wild ferns and snowflakes was painted.

On the bottle body, these patterns are described very finely. In order not to be fancy, the bottle uses only red, white or red and green colors. The red color is used to emphasize a figure in addition to the brand name of the large size. This figure represents what Sarah called “interesting facts”. For example, there are 48 species of known wild mammals in the Changbai Mountain Nature Reserve. 94 species of wild angiosperms are known. The Chinese Merganser that survived from the third century ice age is The world has less than 1,000.

From preparations to completion of the final plan, the whole process was not smooth, and it was completely stopped for a year on the way, so that Sarah Pidgeon expressed doubts and concerns about whether it could be completed. In June 2012, Horse's design draft was approved by Nongfu Spring, but it was difficult to fully realize it due to the bottle making and printing process (the body of the bottle was curved, but the illustration was fine and the area was large, requiring a high level of machinery And technology), Nongfu Springs can not give a clear direction for improvement, the project can only be suspended. Nongfu Spring also looked for other design options.

The duration of the project has been continuously extended, and the cost of the design investment has been spent on hiring designers but also spent many times. During the entire product development period, invited international studios in addition to Horse also included the UK Pearlfisher Studio, Italian Rossetti Design, and Russian StudioIn. Due to cultural differences between international designers and companies and differences in the understanding of bottled aquatic products, Nongfu Springs has always been unsatisfied with the details of the design draft.

For example, some bottle shapes resemble wine bottles or trophies and do not give people the feeling of aquatic products. Some bottle caps are large, and the grip when opening covers is not very good. Some of them are because the hydrological features expressed through the bottle design or pattern are too broad to reflect the uniqueness of Changbai Mountain. The finer parts even in the animal's look, the tiger in the pattern may not be friendly or close, and it may be the reason for this design.

“Actually, you look at this tiger’s eyes and you have tuned a lot of manuscripts to a tiger that makes you feel natural. We don’t want to tune into a cartoon tiger and don’t want to tune into a fierce tiger. It needs a balance. But in the end it is (drawing the tiger's) side, or positive; plus the layout has restrictions ... ... here is a lot of stress." Zhou Zhenhua said to the "Curiosity Daily."

After nearly two years of comparison, in 2014, Nongfu Springs felt that it was a pity that the Horse Studio was abandoning the scheme. Then they found the designer again and the two parties discussed together how to redesign the bottle shape to solve the details and advance the production process. At the time of finalization, including Horse, the team of the various teams submitted a total of 58 drafts and more than 300 design proposals. The Chinese beverage company really took the idea.

As a table water, its packaging can not be too much like wine packaging

If you have some understanding of the packaging design, you may know that Nongfu Spring's emphasis on packaging is considered more domestic than the industry. Previously, the packaging of their tea drink “Oriental Leaf” and milk tea drink “Drinking Tea” had won the Pentawards Silver Award in the beverage category of the International Packaging Design Award.

“Packaging is the most direct channel for communicating with consumers,” Zhou Zhenhua said. “The product is there. Consumers can see what information your product wants to convey. This is the best carrier. So we think we want to pass it to The consumer's stuff should be reflected in the design, and the consumer at first glance knows what we want to do.”

This is especially true in the high-end water market.

With the introduction of this product, Nongfu Spring used more time than people expected. In 2010, their market share exceeded Wahaha, which accounted for the second largest bottled water market in China with a 17.5% market share, ranking behind Master Kong. Since then, they have long been in the top two positions. However, before Nongfu Spring introduced glass bottled water, brands such as 5100 Tibet Glacier Mineral Water, Evergrande Ice Spring, Kunlun Mountain Mineral Water, and Alkaqua Mineral Water (Alkaqua), which had less market share, were used for their products. The name of high-end water.

In this competitive environment, Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen general manager Zhong Wei explained the company’s commercial considerations for the introduction of glass bottled water in an interview with “Packaging & Design” magazine: First, to fill domestic high-end conferences and dining establishments, domestic high-end drinking Water vacancies; the second is that in recent years, market demand has been continuously subdivided, high-end drinking water has been sought after, foreign brands have entered the domestic market to heat up competition, in this context, the brand's product categories should also be subdivided. However, because it took nearly three years to find a suitable water source and the package design took a lot of trouble, Nongfu Spring also introduced this glass bottled water in 2015.

From the perspective of price and packaging design, the benchmark for this product is not Evergrande Ice Spring or Kunlun Mountain Mineral Water, but it is the bottled water of foreign brands such as Parisian Water, Shengmu, VOSS, and these imported drinking water in recent years. More and more, it appears in high-end dining venues and events in China. Just this January, VOSS from Norway has just acquired a 50% stake in the Chinese company Reignwood Group. Reignwood Group has exclusive China sales rights and a large distribution network for Red Bull beverages. VOSS hopes to expand itself through it. Chinese market.

Unifying the company's love water mineral water, in the domestic mineral water product packaging is also a "thought" one, you can see through the bottle hidden in the label on the back of more product information, and the bottle itself is like a magnifying glass. Very delicate.

Paris water

The Norwegian water brand VOSS is sought after by many people because of its stunning packaging.

In early 2015, along with bottled water, there were Nongfu Spring drinking water for infants and students' natural mineral water. The packaging was also quite distinctive. Baby water was considered gestures, and student water was used by foreign illustrators. Cartoon illustration, and design a cap that does not allow water to flow out.

This is considered to be a brand upgrade of Nongfushangquan - through the accurate subdivision of the market to launch three products targeting different consumer groups, entering the high-end water market is the opportunity to break through the ceiling.

In response, Zhou Zhenhua’s response is: “The products we all want to do well in our minds, but what is good, the company will have different definitions of good as it grows and matures, including different horizons.”

From the point of view of product packaging, in the past, only ordinary red bottled mineral water was used for drinking water, and only basic packaging and labels were used to complete the design. The packaging design of this glass bottled water is very complicated, and the departments that need to be mobilized are also more sophisticated. many.

Nongfu Springs has internal packaging design coordination departments. According to the story of the brand's refined products (want to tell consumers the specific content), they are looking for designers who are most suitable for product tonality and communicate with designers. After the designer's various creative ideas are completed, the coordination department will contact the industrial design team to consider the issues of printing and bottle making, so that the design draft can be finally implemented and smoothly processed.

This series of processes was later made into commercial material. At the February 2015 launch event, Nongfu Spring released a series of commercials. This series of commercials filmed the Changbai Mountain water source area and factory of Nongfu Springs at a high level, and also included interviews with designers. They told consumers about design concepts.

Zhou Zhenhua said that the original intention of the filming was originally to leave a record for the history of the company. He took the photographer into Changbai Mountain and photographed the process of building and water source investigation and design. The characters in the film were all in their natural working conditions. More material, the company decided to cut into advertising to tell consumers the process of product birth.

The advertisement of Nongfu Springs took the process of the birth of the product. The material came from the documentary that the company originally used for its own use.

This is indeed a serious attempt. Nongfu Springs did not disclose more sales information. However, from the feedback from consumers currently scattered in various social networking channels, many people have memorized information such as water sources, and also felt from the packaging that the company is trying to do something different. The same thing.