CapsuleBlog

A million bucks for this???

It's chaos at Capsule. Our Creative Principal is storming around the office as I type. He's in an absolute rage, throwing monitors and keyboards off desks, setting piles of paper alight, and generally scaring the **** out of everyone*.

Why, I hear you whisper?

Um, this:

I dared to ask Brian for an official statement. I got a single word: "CRAP".

To the people of Pepsi, we offer you this: We will redo your mark. Not for a million bucks. For FREE. Nobody with working eyeballs should have to look at this.

*This statement may be a slight exaggeration.

More horn tootin'!

Everyone needs their ego stroked sometimes, right?

Coming straight after a post about the award-winning Double Cross bottle, we're also proud to showcase the work we did with Gray Plant Mooty, Minnesota's premier law firm.

We updated their logo mark, moving towards a more contemporary color palette while retaining the strength and simplicity of the original bar design. The type also became modernized via removal of the serifs.

Old:

                         

Refreshed:

   

A beautiful improvement, we hope you'll agree.

Once our designers created the new logo, the rest of the system followed. You can see for yourself how sleek GPM appears now, on its newly launched site: Gray Plant Mooty.

Tootin' our own horn

We're pretty proud of one of our latest projects - our designers created a stunning bottle for Double Cross, a new luxury vodka produced in the Slovak Republic and imported by Old Nassau Imports of NY.

And it's gorgeous, if we do say so ourselves!

Clean minimalism at its best, the packaging design is simple, striking, and evocative. Reminiscent of the contents within, the bottle design is a testament of luxury. Precisely engineered to capture the heritage of the product itself, the rectangular packaging boasts a seamless design and is teeming with artistic elements including verses of old-world Slovakian poetry silk-screened on the back.

“The best design feels as though it has been discovered. It exudes a sense of prestige all its own,” says Brian Adducci, our creative partner. “Creating a high-end, unique package is paramount when introducing a new product to the marketplace. We were charged with matching the quality product with an engaging package design.”

Even before launching, Double Cross Luxury Vodka won a “gold medal in taste” and a “gold medal in packaging” from the 2008 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. This signifies the integrity of the spirit and the ability for it to stand out among the leading contenders.

Check out a video of the gorgeousness here.

iPhone cupcakes

In our office, you have to have an iPhone if you want to be taken seriously.

Which means you'll be allowed to partake in light saber battles with the designers. How cute are these?!

From neatorama.

Tweeny, pretty packaging

I have a weakness, and that weakness is cosmetics... out of sheer curiosity last night I counted the number of lip glosses and lipsticks in my purse - and that count came to eleven. That doesn't include the stuff in the car, in my workdesk drawer etc.

Do I really need eleven goopy glosses in various shades of pink with and without shimmer, moisturizing properties and shine? No. But I'm a sucker... each gloss is a quick little hit of retail therapy and I'll use them all, I swear, by the time I'm 80.

Part of the appeal of new makeup for me is the packaging. The sleek stuff (ala Bobbi Brown) I like best, but I'll also throw in a dash of vintage cutesy such as Stila. I both dread and drool over the Sephora emails that arrive all too often, because they mean my bank account will suffer.

There is, however, a limit, and the new range of Gwen Stefani's fragrance line, Harajuku Lovers, crosses the line for me.

Priced from $25, the packaging is more tweeny than the latest Hannah Montana Halloween costume:

Thoughts?

An Apple a day

I'm not a huge fan of apples. It's that time of year though, so I've made the exception - and in the past week I've baked apple cobbler, apple pie, and apple muffins - and applesauce is on the agenda this weekend. Curse those two giant bags we got at an orchard last weekend. At this point I'll be happy to never see another apple again... at least until next October.

Apple Inc., however, is a different story: a prime example of how clever, continuous tinkering can keep a brand fresh, relevant and sexy. And yes, Apple is a way overused, textbook case, I know. But there's clearly a reason for that.

Take the latest campaign for the iPod Nanochromatic – same slimline product, a few enhanced features like a slightly bigger screen, and one eye-catching image:

Just when the bleak winter starts to dull our senses, we're treated to a rainbow slash of color - something familiar, rendered in a fascinating new way.

Love it!

Tough times

Seems like everyone's in a state of paranoid hyper-vigilance because of the scary economic downturn that's plastered all over the news. Consumer spending is down, investors are freaking out - it's one hot tranny mess out there right now.

Brandweek.com is reporting that McCormick spices is still experiencing a growth in sales, despite all of the economy's woes, because it is one of those "essential" brands that we're always going to use.

Does that mean that after the headless horsemen arrive there will be nothing left but cockroaches and a few cases of Smoky Sweet Pepper seasoning blend?

Times like these do make it seem that the best option for companies is to reign in all "unnecessary" spending - and the first thing to be cut is often funding for marketing projects.

If you can stop the hand-wrenching for a moment, try to think about it differently - perhaps this is the most important time to be thinking about, and improving, the value of your brand.