Category
Clients
yogurt package labels
yogurt cup designs
initial cow sketches for labels
Hawthorne Valley Farm project featured in the book, Recycling & Re-designing Logos
From our feature in the book, Recycling & Re-designing Logos
Hawthorne Valley Farm
Hawthorne Valley Farm, located in the Hudson River Valley in Columbia County NY, is a unique agricultural community based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher. There’s a Waldorf school there, and the farm is run on Biodynamic principles of agriculture. It’s a pretty fascinating place that resembles a little German village populated with gentle hippie-types.
Read More »Brown Swiss cows freely roam the fields, affectionately known as “Swissies”. Their milk is made into dairy products, which are sold on-site at the farm market along with other farm-fresh foods. For a long time, the only yogurt product HVF carried was plain yogurt in a quart container, which is sold at the farm store, at NYC’s Union Square Greenmarket, and a few other natural food stores throughout the northeast, so their exposure is somewhat limited. But if you think the organic dairy market is peaceful and gentle – think again: competition is fierce, and the explosion in local and organic foods has made it incumbent on enterprises like HVF to present a more professional image on the supermarket shelf. And it doesn’t hurt to offer something other than a quart of plain.
When the farm called us, they were expanding their product line by adding a smaller 6-oz cup and several new flavors as part of a fresh strategy. Hiring a professional graphic design firm was a logical next step. Our main point of contact? The farm manager and his wife.
The client was comfortable with the cow in the old logo the way it was: a graceful, serene rendering, meant to show respect for an animal they felt was too often portrayed as silly and cartoonish. So the Julia Reich Design creative team began by taking the original cow and “cleaning it up” a little – not changing it, but smoothing out the choppy lines and helping her “read” better as a cow icon. Then we started experimenting with the background landscape, color palette, and type treatment. The new label was approved, with refreshed cow and landscape, and the cups were produced. The packages hit the shelves in 2009.
HVF's products are good for you and their farming methods are good for the earth. We at Julia Reich Design appreciate what they do and we put this at the core of our relationship - we want to help them get to a new level.
(thanks to Matthew Porter and PhD, from the book Recycling and Redesigning Logos, Rockport Publishers)