what’s your favorite? orange. red. purple. the famous summertime treat of childhood has made its way to the shelves of publix.
this is an interesting one, packaging-wise, too. product shots combined with color drawings turn the pops into speedy-looking cars that no child will want to turn down. the emphasized product name is equally intriguing: first, it’s a serif font. most of the “junk food” snack items so far have used a sans-serif font, and only the healthier, more traditional groceries feature the fonts with feet. secondly, this package is an example of a perplexing subset of the new design: the emphasized word isn’t the product name itself. it’s an adjective. the product name is in the smaller subhed typeface below. i don’t quite understand this one: it seems to me that it would be better to emphasize the product—makes it easier to identify from across the store, plus it’s just a more intuitive and customer-friendly approach, in my opinion.
I agree with your quandry about the choice to emphasize “Junior” instead of the name of the product itself. Have you checked out the chocolate chips package? The first thing I noticed was that the chips in the illustration are red. My first thought was that it was a package of some sort of flavored chips . . . strawberry perhaps? Not a very appealing product in my mind. But upon closer inspection I realized they were regular old chocolate chips. Seems to me that the illustration on a package should enable you to identify the product with a quick glance. If I have to read the fine print to find out what’s inside there’s a high liklihood that I will just keep walking down the aisle.
I think that the Publix popsicles are probably some of my favorite food package designs ever. Even better than this box is the box for the banana popsicles. Also, I don’t think emphasizing the ‘Junior’ is at all confusing. I think the image on the front is very appealing, and you can tell what is being sold.
I wish I had bought a box of the banana popsicles, just to have the box. I don’t live near a Publix, though. I’ll have to wait until next time I’m in Florida.
I rather like the emphasis on the adjective. As Karen W points out, the illustration makes it easy to identify what the product is, and emphasizing the type of product being sold (”junior,” “light,” etc.) makes it easier to avoid picking up the wrong thing and not noticing.