Mark Oliver received the first Santa Barbara Fellow Award, the American Institute of Graphic Art’s highest honor. The award was presented in recognition of Mr. Oliver’s significant personal and professional contribution to raising the standards of excellence within the design community, and for his contributions to his community at large.

“I am delighted that the AIGA has recognized one of our legendary creatives. Mark Oliver is the perfect fit for this honor, demonstrating that great design has no boundaries,” said Patty Devlin-Driskel, president of the Santa Barbara chapter.

A member of the AIGA since 1983, Oliver’s design career has spanned more than three decades. His firm, Mark Oliver, Inc., has clients throughout the United States. In addition to receiving more than 450 national and international awards, his work is included in the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. 

His work is “some of the freshest, clearest, and most strategic design… Santa Barbara would not be the place you see today were it not for the vision, style, and hard work that Mr. Oliver brought to it. He’s a true Santa Barbara legend,” noted Marty Neumeier, designer and author of the best-selling business books “The Brand Gap” and “Zag.”

Over the years, Oliver has given back to his community by co-founding the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and working with more than 20 nonprofit groups. He is board president of the Santa Ynez Valley Alliance and a member of the Brooks Institute Board of Trustees.

“It is a great honor to be presented with the Fellow Award,” Oliver said in accepting the medallion. “I am thankful for how wonderfully the design community has appreciated my work, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the AIGA.”

Founded in 1914, the AIGA is the nation’s largest association for professional design,with 22,000 members. AIGA Santa Barbara is one of 67 chapters nationwide.

Mark Oliver, Inc. is a full-service brand communications design firm. It specializes in consumer packaged goods brand-building and packaging design.

The firm asked the branding team at MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.) to come up with a solution that would punch up the product’s presence on the store shelf. We told them that consumers spend less than 2.5 seconds considering a product, that what works visually has to work immediately, that there are no second chances — and that differentiation is key.

Our segment review showed that 90% of the competitive set did not include a photo of the product in use; however the best-selling brands did. Another find was that consumers guiltily admitted eating the product by the spoonful straight from the jar. The wonderfully natural human behavior trait became part of our copy and broadened the appeal of the product.

The design solution for the primary display panel was a visual narrative showing photos of the product in use, the “spoonful” copy, modified visual cues that would maintain some the old brand equities, and product color coding. A warm, appealing story completed the backside narrative. The brand redesign covered all the products and corporate identity materials.

New King’s Cupboard branding and packaging by MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.)

MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.) is a full-service design and branding agency specializing in consumer packaged goods. For more information or to contact us please call 805 686 5166, or email info@markoliverinc.com.

The team at MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.) audited the line and the competition and proposed these objectives: Redesign the trademark; create a system identity that the consumer could quickly recognize; and prioritize and simplify label information, making the redesigned trademark the #1 point of the packaging line. The design team set about creating multiple designs reflecting the objectives. Once finalized, MOI handed off the project to the firm’s in-house group to implement. “The new, unified packaging program has provided the product line with a far greater shelf presence,” noted Mark Oliver, principal of the firm. “In a busy category, organization of packaging is crucial. This design program nicely balances organization and creativity.”

MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.) is full-service packaging design and branding agency. For more information or to contact us about a possible project, please call 805 686 5166 or email info@markoliverinc.com.

New MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.) packaging design for Earth Science personal care products

Trademark and packaging © 2012 Earth Science Naturals. Used with permission.

Two pet pygmy goats, named Never and Epernay, loved to jump from heights. With their unrestrained spiral loops, flipper turns and straight-legged leaps they were a constant source of entertainment. When choosing a name for his new brand of Santa Barbara County wines, Norman Yost wanted to project fun, enjoyment, and happiness. Norm is a playful spirit so he opted to name it after his flying kids, Flying Goat Cellars.

When it came to his all natural sparkling wines, with a wry sense of humor Norm called them “Goat Bubbles.” He gave the packaging design and branding team at MOI (Mark Oliver, Inc.) poetic license to come up with innovative wine labels. With a name like that, the graphic design was pretty obvious. We put a goat illustration within its own bubble, each goat positioned a little differently in each bubble, all of them floating up from the bottom of their bottles. The creative result is playful and an unusual design solution as well.

The four-part label is unique from a wine label production standpoint, too. The printer had never created a multiple element label of this complexity and tests were conducted to assure the label film would adhere properly during production. Finally, each of the wines has a hand-dipped colored wax crown that matches the label color. The result? Adults love it. The kids, too.

Does the country of origin make a difference in what you purchase?

Many products no longer show where they are made, only the location of the distributor. With the globalization of food sourcing, what you are buying can come from anywhere.

If you’re concerned about the origin of the item you are purchasing, there is a simple key to being informed.

It’s the bar code. By simply knowing how to read the numbers, you can be a more informed consumer. Keep in mind that while it is true many products of foreign origin use the U.S. or Canadian bar code, others do not.

Here are some basic tips. U.S. and Canadian bar codes have a 12 digit number and all other international codes have 13. The first three digits of the 13 digit international bar code show the country of origin.

Below is the key to de-coding the code.

Some of the more dominant international codes are:
France 300-379
Germany 400-440
Japan 45-49
Taiwan 471
Philippines 480
Hong Kong 489
Poland 590
China 690-695
Mexico 750
Chile 780
Brazil 789-790
South Korea 880
Thailand 885
India 890
Vietnam 893
Indonesia 899

As an aware consumer, expand your purchasing decision beyond price and ingredients. Know where your product comes from and purchase with assurance.

For more country code information:
www.makebarcode.com/specs/ean_cc.html

A key component of capturing that quality was to use a special basket to allow the ricotta to drain and form properly. Removing the ricotta from the basket to package it would destroy the product’s unique qualities, so it was decided to keep the basket and vacuum form a plastic seal around it.

The large piece of stiff film necessary to form the basket’s lid presented unique challenges for packaging. The client and design team at MOI also saw an opportunity to use the basket to showcase the product. Keeping the sides open allowed the design team to create a flap that tucked in on either side, snapping into position and holding the basket firmly in place. The open sides doubled as a “window” displaying the product within the basket.

Mark Oliver, CEO of the branding firm, noted, “often the most work goes into creating simple looking yet complex structures. After a number of prototypes, this elegant solution met the criteria for showcasing the product and maintaining the long-established branding scheme, while using environmentally sensitive outer packaging materials and soy inks.”

Photo © 2011 Alan Campbell acpfoto.com

But not long ago a funny thing happened. Falafel began showing up in restaurants and food trucks in places like New York City. A generation of new users is emerging eager to consume at home the foods they’ve grown to enjoy when eating out, or during travels abroad.

The management at Tarazi noticed the increase in interest in Falafel and asked MOI to help them expand the brand appeal to new markets. The challenge for the team at MOI was to refresh the brand to appeal to the new consumer while not alienating the old one.

An additional challenge the team discovered was the need to separate the product from “protein substitute” products. Research showed that traditional consumers and younger ones alike were attracted to the product because of its great taste and traditional nature, not because it made a good veggie burger or meat substitute.

Falafel and vegetables tumbling into the open pita signify the fresh taste experience consumers expect while portraying the well-known use of Falafel. Reference to meat substitutes was dropped, and copy was added on the benefits of the product.

The trademark was redrawn with proper letterforms, but retained the feel of the old logo for past consumers. The crisp and clean presentation sets the product apart from others in the ethnic foods section.

As agency CEO Mark Oliver noted, “this refreshing design creates the impact and interest to pull a consumer to a great old product, now new again.”

The country’s leading producer of smoked seafood and long-time MOI client Ocean Beauty Seafood approached the creative team with the challenge to create new packaging for a line of fresh-made salmon spreads to be sold in delicatessen departments in supermarkets.

Using the research as a starting point, the team crafted a branded appearance that invoked the nostalgia for the authenticity of an earlier period, in this case the Victorian-era, using a “heritage” look. The packaging incorporates copy and visual cues throughout to convey the ready-to-use aspect of the product. A big marketing plus is the product’s use of wild caught sockeye salmon, which is a sustainable fish, a fact which was included in many places on the package. Additionally, for shelf display, the innovative sleeve has the ability to stand up on its edge.

Agency principal Mark Oliver noted that the key considerations “were to assure the buyer that the products had the authentic taste and quality of an old-world smoked salmon product while at the same time providing all the values and conveniences that modern consumers look for. We think the packaging delivers on all counts.”

We found the answer on a blustery day by looking up. We heard noises coming from the rooftops of various barns and outbuildings. And there was the answer: a vast array of shapes and sizes of distinctive animal weathervanes turning to face the wind. The rest was a breeze.

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