Looking at typography on packaging.

When looking at typography I decided to stick with the Kellogg's cereal since they have some great examples.

Firstly, the main image that comes up in one's head when thinking of Kellogg's is the logo, which is quite simply the name 'Kellogg's'. Now the reason why the logo is so strongly associated with the brand is because it's used all the time and is consistent as well as being simple in design, which is an effective attribute as mentioned in my previous post.




Here are three examples of Kellogg cereal boxes. As you can see on the first one despite the difference in background colour the logo remains red but is always placed on an area where it can be seen and read easily.

However, the text that does always change is the name of the cereal. If you look at it, it's clearly obvious that the cereal name is designed to suit it's target audience. So for example 'Coco Pops' is done in bubble letters and filled with a chocolate colour (this also appropriately represents the cereal), and naturally this would appeal more to kids rather than adults. Then there is 'Fruit 'n Fibre'. Here the text is a lot more simple, which makes it very easy to read and has something about it's design that seems more appropriate for an adult target audience; this is probably the white outline around the black text.

Here is a link that will take you to the entire cereal collection and you'll see that only one cereal box has 'Kellogg's' in a different colour (that is the corn flakes cereal).

http://www.kelloggs.co.uk/products/

Now for a quick look at another brand.


Here's another example where the logo is typography based. Again, this is a logo that is used and seen extremely often (too often if I might add) and is probably the most well known logo. It does sometimes appear in different colours , though white is the colour most used. As you can see this logo is easy to read and still maintains simplicity while also being stylish. It seems like this design was crafted in order to appeal to a very broad range of people, which seems to work as people of all ages drink it.

Logos product names aren't the only typography that can be found on products. When you look at the back of a product there could easily be all sorts of information such as competitions etc. But what you will always find are the ingredients and nutritional information unless it's not food then you'll find Health and Safety information etc.


These pictures here are from a cereal box for children ('Rice Crackles'). This particular cereal box actually does have a competition on the back and the nutritional information is located on the side. But if we look at the text you can see that the main attraction is the header in bubble letters in a pink on a yellow coloured background. To me it seems like the designer was trying to make it so kids would see this and then ask their parents to read it or enter the competition (whether they can understand the text, which is unlikely).

Finally, if we take a look at the nutritional information it is generally quite easy to read - I could do so even in a very dimly lit room - despite the small text. This seems to be due to the colour of the text - black on white, which is the biggest contrast you can get between colours. Then it's neatly arrange in to blue segments that represent tables and these tables contain all the various nutritional information.

One last point is that on any cereal box and most products it is important to make the name of a product to stand out more than anything else on the packaging because when someone is looking or shopping they usually think about the product itself rather than the brand (which I assume is usually thought of after the product). This is why when you look most packaging you'll notice the product name will be larger in font size than the rest.