Muckross Creamery Brand Packaging

Muckross Creamery is an Irish ice cream brand range, hand-crafted by the Fleming family. Their strap-line is ‘From Cow to Cone’ – communicating the freshness of their delicious ice cream.

Catherine and John Fleming live with their lovely family of six children, and of course… all their friendly farm cows, on their charming farm in Muckross, Killarney. John Fleming is a fifth-generation dairy farmer. His family have been farming in Muckross, Killarney since the 1840’s. Their mouth-watering ice cream is made using their own fresh milk, fresh cream and free-range eggs. Being a farm-based enterprise in Killarney, they source all the fresh ingredients and supplies for each scrumptious flavour of their artisan range locally, to support the local economy. Their short supply chain and values of commitment to quality and sustainable production contribute to the great taste of their ice-cream.

When they reached out to Clare Lynch Creative on re-branding, key aspects they wanted to convey were the natural and fresh qualities of their ice cream. Therefore, featuring one of their resident, friendly farm cows in their brand and packaging design was a natural progression. It was important to implement this in a well-crafted manner, to denote that they are a quality brand range of ice cream.

Further to that, the colours from the fresh ingredients used in the ice cream were used as an inspiration source to form the colour palette for the brand, along with the traditionally-associated dairy colour of blue – but freshened up in a slightly brighter and modern tone, linking with the summery feeling associated with ice cream.

Muckross Creamery Ice Cream Brand Identity & Packaging Design

The brand typography has a traditional feel to it – with a bold, rustic font selected and hand-tailored for the bespoke brandmark along with hand-written descriptors; to support the values the client wanted to convey of how the ice cream is hand-made on their farm with fresh, local ingredients. The grain texture and the hand-drawn fruit silhouettes on the packaging further support and highlight this. As their brand story is an important aspect to the brand, it is featured on the packs with a photo of the family (which has since gained a new little member!). Muckross Creamery is a Listowel Food Fair winner for it’s flavoursome and tasty ice cream, and this key USP is highlighted on the packaging. The cute tubs are earthy and recyclable, which adds to their popularity, both as it communicates the rustic, traditional qualities to consumers, and also to how they are a conscientious and sustainable company.

You can follow them on Instagram @muckrosscreamery

June 30, 2020 /

Katie’s Kombucha Brand Packaging

Katie’s Kombucha Packaging Design

Katie’s Kombucha is a healthy probiotic drink, which is good for the gut and immune system. It is a delicious, refreshing vegan soft drink range, made with love by Ballymaloe-trained chef, Katie McCann.

When it comes to health, the gut is a key area to begin with, known as the body’s ‘second brain’ – it is trusted to support the body to fuel our happiness, health and wellness. The drink is alive and contains a community of healthy bacteria living inside which is beneficial to our bodies. When you feel alive, you can create what you love and love what you create.

Katie’s Kombucha is naturally fermented in small batches and is a naturally functional food. There are two flavours launched to date – ‘Raspberry’ (flavoured with 100% Wicklow raspberries) and ‘Apple & Dandelion’ (flavoured with 100% organic apples). It is unpasteurised, sustainably produced, vegan, gluten free and has recyclable packaging. Katie’s Kombucha refreshes, rebalances, replenishes the body.

Some key factors Katie wanted to communicate with the brand was her passion for creating kombucha, how it is a healthy product that’s good for you and that it’s wholesome and natural.

As Katie and the passion she has for what she does is the essence of the brand, the design outcome created for the brand packaging design uses the silhouette of a woman, representing Katie. The silhouette of the woman (Katie) has the fruits which the kombucha consists of intertwined into the shape of her hair, in a natural and organic style.

To make the word ‘kombucha’ easy to read for those unfamiliar with it, the three syllables are in a stacked block reading ‘KOM-BU-CHA’ to make up the brandmark. The hand-tailored font in the logo is earthy and rustic, communicating the natural ethos and ingredients of the kombucha. A texture with a subtle grain has been integrated with the typography and silhouette to further accentuate the wholesome qualities of the brand.

Each favour is differentiated by colour (guided by the fruits each contains), along with it’s own fruit icon. There was a third flavour ‘ginger’ created, to be launched at a later date. A hand-written font is used for the flavour descriptions, further emphasising the hand-made and personal process to how Katie’s Kombucha is created. An additional detail created is the unique barcode, showcasing the silhouette of leaves and berries. A hand-drawn heart icon highlights the feature that the kombucha is 100% Vegan.

Another key factor to consider when designing the kombucha was Katie’s highly conscientious nature in relation to being sustainable and the environment. Therefore, she chose a uniquely-shaped bottle which is easy to recycle and we ensured to work with the printer to use the earthy, recycled paper stock ‘Shiro’ rather than a sticker to make them easily re-usable and recyclable. They are then sealed with a tamper-proof seal.

Katie loved how the results communicate her brand essence and values, with strong visual impact on shelves in stores and has received much positive feedback on the new packaging from her customers and on social media. It’s sales have grown to a wide range of stores such as many of the SuperValu’s throughout Dublin, online deliveries stockist Neighbourfood, 3FE cafes and a number of other unique stores and cafes around Dublin and Wicklow.

Please enjoy the below video with sound and follow Katie’s Kombucha on Instagram @katiekombucha

See the positive feedback I received from Katie here.

Design: Clare Lynch Creative

Photography: Brendan Ryan Photography

Photo Styling: Clare Lynch, Betsy Gach.

Video: Shane Caffrey

June 9, 2020 /

Inishbofin Guide Book

Inishbofin Guide

This is a guide to Inishbofin, a small island off the coast of Ireland. Inishbofin has a population of 180 people and relies heavily on tourism. This project explored a way of attracting more tourists to the island. The concept behind it is to create a series of landmarks around the island, which honour Inishbofin’s history and culture. As Inishbofin is an eco-friendly island, they seek to achieve sustainable tourism that does not negatively impact upon the island’s natural environment, while at the same time benefits and supports the local community. Therefore, the concept was each sculpture would be created with eco-friendly, sustainable materials such as wood, bog oak, stone and earthy materials which would be in harmony with the local landscape and for each one to be clever and creatively designed. Some of the landmarks/highlights I thought of were the famous Grace O’Malley, the Cleggan Disaster, the island’s Flora & Fauna wildlife, the Patron Saint of Bofin, Cromwell’s Barracks, the White Cow (the island’s name) and Cockles & Mussels. I explored different ways in which these sculptures would be created. The idea being that visitors can interact with the sculptures and will want to find each one, to take photographs with them and tick them off their list of cultural things to see on the island. Beside each sculpture would be a small plaque which also naturally blends in with the local environment, which tells the story behind the sculpture.

Taking visual cues from the Camino de Santiago, where there is the a subtle shell with an arrow showing the direction to walk, I designed an icon which would work in the same way for Inishbofin’s sculptures. It is a simple boat shape, where the sail is an arrow – the direction of the arrow indicates which way to walk to each attraction. These would be set subtly in stone around the island, to ensure not to impact the island’s beautiful and natural landscape.

The main piece was an A5, side-stitched booklet with a fold-out A3 map showing the location of each sculpture around the island in the centre-fold. It was riso-printed using a rigorous 7-colour process, with some lovely ‘happy accidents’ of colour offsets in the finished booklet. The cover was then debossed with the shape of the map. Each page uses modern typography and layouts. On researching the island, many people said how Inishbofin was a place that people come to get lost and find themselves in, enjoying the slower pace of life and the fresh sea air and nature. The expression ‘There’s plenty of time on the island’ is a commonly used expression. This inspired the name for this booklet, with the play of words ‘A Guide to Getting Lost’. I created an icon for each sculpture, which visitors can easily find on the map, and used some expressions throughout which represent the essence of life on Bofin.

At this stage of the project, I created a 3D wooden stylised map of the island, with laser etchings of the icons, and also created 3D-printed icons to represent each sculpture (although not aimed to be the finished sculpture design). For the numbers on the map, I tailored an old Irish Celtic font to create individual, unique numbers which still embody the Celtic feel, but with a modern twist. I then laser printed these personally-designed numbers on to wood, to have as physical items to display as part of the overall proposed exhibition display. The use of wood for the display stand added to the sustainability, eco-friendly culture with which Inishbofin is proud of.

July 27, 2018 /

CashAnalytics Re-Brand

CashAnalytics Re-Brand & Brand Guidelines

CashAnalytics Re-brand, Brand Guidelines & Marketing Collateral

CashAnalytics build software that solves problems using the latest cloud and web based technologies, that help large companies manage their day-to-day treasury, risk and compliance challenges in an efficient and controlled manner. They work with a broad spectrum of organisations ranging from mid-tier private equity backed companies to stock market listed multinational enterprises. They are experts in corporate cash and treasury management, compliance, software development, customer service and project management.

They liked their existing logo to some extent, but wanted a more modernised look and feel, to ensure their logo was contemporary and communicated how the services they offer use the latest software technology to create results in a fast time-frame compared to their competitors. To create this, the bars from the treasury building in the original logo were used to stand alone as a strong analytics symbol, along with the cleaner, modernised Futura typeface. This created a new, modern CashAnalytics logo, which still easily links to be an evolution of their previous logo. There is a secondary version of their logo, which includes their strapline ‘Cash and Liquidity Forecasting’, for more specific uses.

The brand was then further developed across stationery, infographics, web graphics, eNewsletters, eBooks, brochures, exhibition graphics and brand guidelines, to roll out the re-brand in a consistent manner across all CashAnalytics collateral. The client was very happy with the new streamlined result across all their points of contact with clients.

February 19, 2018 /