If you've stepped into a Walgreens lately you probably have noticed their new package design for their generic products. Yesterday, while cruising through the candy aisle (naturally!), I noticed this rebrand. It's clean, fresh, and fun.
Now I didn't remember what the former brand looked like so I did some research. The old brand just had the Walgreens "W" and a textured red background. The branding showed off Helvetic complete with drop shadow! This look, by definition, was generic. This old packaging did, however, allow the product to be visible through the see-through packaging, allowing the candy to be the "eye-candy". (Pardon the pun.) The packaging itself wasn't selling the candy so the design relied on the candy to sell itself. While I think this is a pretty smart tactic, I do believe this generic red design looked cheap and actually deterred from the delicious looking candy inside.
When I was at Walgreens, I was with a group of other designers. We all sat in the candy aisle discussing this wonderful new rebrand, complete with a new name, Nice!. We loved the clean use of white space as well as the fun approach to the see-through window. The designers really thought about each specific candy. The see-through windows are different for each different candy. The windows create a shape that shows off the colors of each different candy. The best example was the Peanut Butter Bars. They are black and white striped so, naturally, the window would be in the shape of a zebra.
The actual naming of the generic brand was interesting. Instead of just using the "W", Walgreens gave it a name. It became it's own brand instead of associating itself with the actual store. Not only does the name give the brand an identity, it also allows for consistency. We did notice that the Nice! brand wasn't exclusive to candy. It carried over into the nuts. Hopefully Walgreens plans to carry this rebranding into their other generic products including food, cosmetics, toiletries, ect.
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