6 weeks
School Project
Independent
Branding, Packaging
Lead Designer
Cultured meat is growing in popularity in grocery stores and restaurants, providing consumers a competitively more ethical choice when it comes to their diet. Although not technically vegan, lab-grown meat is an environmentally-friendly option that still gives the same texture, flavor, and nutrition without the slaughter regular meat comes with. However, this is still a very new idea to people; it doesn’t seem appetizing to think about meat growing in a lab.
Meatable is a company based in the Netherlands that is offering a cultured meat product to appeal to those who may want to be less harmful to animals and the environment but do not want to completely cut out meat or abide by a strict vegan diet. How might a packaging design clearly communicate the product as 100% meat, stand out on shelves against competitors, and still look appetizing?
For this project, it was important to determine what packaging for a product that lies in between vegan and non-vegan options looks like. The final design needed to look appetizing and create a trustworthy brand appeal for consumers, particularly those who already eat meat and do not want to cut it out entirely (for example, baby boomers).The solution includes incorporating familiar design systems of meat and barbecue packaging to appeal to Boomers and provides appetite appeal, while providing clarity that the product is cultured meat.
The brand board defined what Meatable, as a brand, was and wasn’t. This outlined their background, their language and values, photography styles, typography styles, and illustration styles to get a sense of who they were. Their use of frames and other graphic elements gave the brand a sense of friendliness and authenticity that needed to be evident in the packaging design.
The audit board helped highlight similarities and patterns commonly used in similar packaging designs. Expanding this to other products, not just other cultured or vegan meat products, was helpful to see what typographic lockups and graphic elements worked and how they interacted together within the design and the package.
Using these boards together helped develop two mood boards that represented a spectrum of what the packaging design could look like and identify potential assets and elements. Using the research boards gave a sense of how the graphic and type elements should work together in a way that is appetizing and eye-catching. Keeping this and the audience in mind, the familiar “backyard bbq” mood board worked better than the “healthy earth” one. It helped to imagine the persona walking through a grocery store and how they would see the design; the bold colors and graphics are key factors that would cause the target demographic to pick up the product over competing products. The “healthy earth” board was leaning too heavily into vegan packaging, which could be misleading to the demographic.
Sketches were created using several strategies to come up with wordmark ideas. Two stood out the most, and were cleaned up for a first iteration for feedback.
The first utilized minimal type, demanding attention to the term “un-cuts”, framed by a graphic element (in this case, the bull face). This felt appealing due to it being text-forward, making it enduring and flexible. For example, the sub-brand name could stay the same while the graphic element changed with future products. This line of cultured meat was ribeye steak, so the graphic element was a bull, but for future uses, the brand could offer cultured turkey meat and use a turkey as a graphical element. The customer could see the familiar lockup on the shelves and understand what they are buying from a quick glance.
The second logo felt like a seal of approval or certification. Because of this, it felt premium and trustworthy. The cow hoof is a metaphor for a cow approving this product because it assumes “slaughter-free”. However, a cow hoof is hard to clearly display, so in the refined iteration, there is a cow face instead.
Both logo ideas could have worked with the moodboard, and they were roughly mocked up on a packaging lockup. This was a pivotal part of the process; seeing the mark interact with other elements and the colors made it clear that simplicity was more successful than the busy and realistic wordmark represented as the seal. The packaging had to clearly communicate this was cultured meat, and using a cow head that was too realistic could communicate it as slaughtered beef instead of cultured beef. The abstracted bull head also allowed for more flexibility trying to create a hierarchy with type and elements.
The first iteration of mockups explored how to incorporate bugs, tags, and placement of mandatory elements with the rough draft of the wordmark made. The brand narrative needed to flow easily across all sides of the packaging, and that felt represented the most with the mockup with the abstracted bull head. The tag coming off the bull ear was a fun opportunity to play with on the packaging as it represents the tags some farm animals would have. The smoke background felt too distracting when asked for group feedback, however a gritty texture for the background felt on-brand over having just a plain black background.
Some last minute changes were made to clean up the design. First, the bull head was moved slightly so that the design interacted with the lines surrounding “rib eye steak” more (ears hang off of the lines). The “un-cuts” tag was made a little bigger as space allowed. The tray was changed to the color black, which gave a sense of exclusivity and quality.
The best way to move forward when you are stuck within a project is to plug it into a mockup and see how it interacts with other elements, especially if you are trying to decide between different options.
The finished packaging design shows that cultured meat can look appetizing, stand out and be eye-catching on a shelf. Most of all, it can look and feel exciting for people wanting new and alternative options in their diet. Success for this project was measured on the clear execution of these ideas and it was done so in a way that the message was still clear: it’s cultured meat, and it will taste like any other meat you barbeque.
It would be beneficial to quantify the success of this design by testing it in real life, on shelves, and perhaps with taste testing with the packaging on display. It would be even more compelling and persuasive to have people try to distinguish what meat they may be taste testing with the packaging (real steak vs meatable steak) and publish the results online. Not only does this allow for a chance to market the product through word-of-mouth and through a campaign, but it also allows for the brand to educate consumers on the product and gain customer loyalty.
