Yorkshire Day- a reason to celebrate Yorkshire's finest food and drink

Here at United by Design, we are very proud to be situated in Yorkshire. You could probably already tell this from our previous blog post, highlighting some of our favourite places to visit from around the county. We're back today, on Yorkshire Day no less, to sing the praises of some more of our wonderful clients, who produce some award-winning food and drink goodies right here in the heart of Yorkshire.

SLOEmotion

Sloes, damsons and cherries, plucked straight from the hedgerows and orchards of Yorkshire, are the key ingredients for the delicious range of spirits, chocolates and chutneys available from award winning SLOEmotion. The spirits can be enjoyed on their own, or as part of a cocktail, (see their website for some great ideas), and their SLOEmotion No.7 fruit cup is a great addition to a summer party.

SLOEmotion can be found at many of the fayres and shows around Yorkshire, the next place to spot them is the York Food & Drink Festival coming up on September 20th - 29th.

Sloe Miniatures. 

Choc Affair

As we've discussed before, York has strong ties to chocolate, with some of the worlds most well-loved brands starting their lives in the city. Nowadays chocolatey innovation is still taking place, and Choc Affair are really pushing the boundaries of pairing chocolate with unusual, yet delicious flavours – Lucy recommends the lime and lavendar. Their brightly packaged bars, lollies and other yummy treats can be found in several stores around Yorkshire (see their website for more information), and you can even go and visit the factory (enquire online).

Just some of the flavours available from Choc Affair.

Lu Lin

From sourcing the leaves, to it arriving in your teapot, Lu Lin oversee everything, ensuring you the highest quality loose leaf tea. It's that good that you can find it in Harrods, and the company have won several Great Taste Gold Awards. Lu Lin also have all the kit to make your tea time special, including teapots and teacups especially for loose tea. Their Tea Cubed and blooming teas are real innovations and bring a sense of the futuristic to a drink that has been a world favourite for over 4000 years.

Lu Lin Tea Range.

Treboom Brewery

Currently undertaking their first foray into bottling, Treboom's mission is to bang the drum for good beer, and as far as we are concerned, they are succeeding. Their beers can be found on tap in several pubs around York, and we can expect bottles to be hitting shelves some time in the next few months. Treboom have won several awards for their beers, have brewed a special beer, Myricale, in support of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and their Kettle Drum Best Bitter is being used in Harrogate Preserves Co.'s Ale, Fig and Apricot chutney, they are a very busy brewery! But they even made time to have an art, beer and food festival in June, called Brewery Beats. We are sure there are even more great things in store for Treboom, so make sure you keep an eye out for those new bottles!

Jane and John at Treboom Brewery, Image from York Press.

Elland Brewery

Originally formed in 2002, Elland Brewery ales can be found on tap and in bottles. The brewery has won several awards from SIBA and CAMRA, and this year launched a Pale Ale, Charity, at Clifford Beer Festival, to help raise money for FDM (For Disability Mobility). Elland's beers have been sampled by Christine Talbot from Calendar, who attended the brewing of Charity, and Holly Willoughby on This Morning. We are very proud to have worked with Elland on the design of the pump clip for Charity, and hope that it's success has helped FDM in their hard work.

FDM operate a specially modified minibus to provide transport for the elderly, disabled adults, people with mobility problems, and children in the south Leeds area. The bus can be used for shopping trips and days or evenings out.

Calendar's Christine Talbot at Elland Brewery.

Indie shops and food festivals

As big foodies, we love to shop from the independent stores, and Yorkshire has no shortage of those! From York, Leeds and Malton, to Bridlington, Hull and Whitby, everywhere has their own specialities to shout about, and this makes Yorkshire a great culinary experience for all. One of the best things about Yorkshire's love for food is the vast array of markets and festivals that can be found around the county. Market towns are aplenty, and one in particular, which we're quite fond of, Malton, have a monthly food lover's market, you should check it out, you may even see some of our lovely clients there! We're also looking forward to York's Food & Drink Festival, which we've already mentioned is coming up soon.

York Food & Drink Market.

Happy Yorkshire Day everybody!


Do you have a favourite Yorkshire delicacy, or a favourite indie food shop? Let us know, tweet us @ubd_studio

Gone are the days of the humble box

Here at United by Design we love quirky packaging. A link on Facebook captured our attention and got us looking at some innovative packaging ideas. After a little more digging around on the internet we came up with this slideshow of packaging ideas that got us talking, laughing, and thinking, exactly what good packaging should do:



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

We think these are great, which one is your favourite?

It is quite clear to us that in a world where innovation is king and standing out from the crowd is key to success, it is no longer enough to just have a good product. Sure, without a good product you have nothing, but without the tools to sell it, then you just have a lot of product, and not a lot of pennies! Your brand packaging is what makes your product great; it’s what sells it. Packaging should say, “Hey, you, look at me! Pick me up! I am better than that product there, look at my exciting packaging!” Ok, so packaging doesn’t really talk, but a picture is worth 1,000 words, and your packaging needs to tell your consumer everything your product has to offer. It needs to ooze personality and help tell the brand story.

So you’re happy with your product, you think it’s the bee’s knees, but the masses don’t seem to agree with you, what do you do? You need to get some insight from market research, from the people who buy your product but also those who don't, to find out why they don't! Then you need to look at category cues, your competition, those who do amazingly well – so you can benchmark and of course look at your brand story and see how you can express it to entice and draw people in.

Never be afraid to change things! This may be through evolution or perhaps you need to employ and more aggressive approach and innovate in your sector. Do not be afraid to do thing differently to help differentiate! It will ultimately help you to develop your business. Gain insight and act on it!

Take SLOEmotion for example. We continue to enjoy work with the team to evolve their company and the way they do things – ‘evolution rather than revolution’. The basics were already there, a great, award winning product and a signature bottle shape. United by Design has brought the SLOEmotion range of products together, whilst differentiating between the various spirits (gin, vodka, brandy, whiskey), using category cues to help instant recognition; the characteristics that people associate with certain products, e.g red is associated with vodka and purple with sloe gin. The distinctive shape of the SLOEmotion 35cl bottles enabled us to extend the brand to a large 70cl size and a gift range of 5cl bottle, all accentuate the originality of the SLOEmotion brand story. Focussing on finer details such as the hedgerow sprig, strap-line, and focus on the actual fruit help the consumer to be clear on what they are buying.

We also helped to reduce packaging costs for the truffle ranges by designing a generic signature box with a range of product stickers depending on the contents of the box. It’s these simple yet effective ideas that make all the difference in such a competitive market for a business that is thinking about the bottom line as well as making profits!



Early last year we worked closely with the company to launch a new product that’s packaging design has a completely different feel to the others that have been developed to date. SLOEmotion No. 7 fruit cup (gin based mixer) has a fun and fresh design but is still easily identifiable as a SLOEmotion product. Compared to its competitors it has a contemporary design that makes it stand out on the shelves. SLOEmotion have embraced change and challenged the norm to help them define themselves in a very competitive market where other companies have lead for a long time and other brands have decided to create 'me too' products that look lifeless and very much a lesser product due to the strength of the brand leader. This approach, although calculated, is enabling SLOEmotion to make a name for themselves as being different – in a good way!



What we’re really getting at is that packaging no longer just serves as a means of housing a product, it’s a strategic design process, and to get ahead you really have to ‘think outside the box’ (see what we did there?).



Images from: 
http://humorcamp.com/view/6251/
www.thedieline.com