I was kindly asked by Leeds based design agency Robot Food if I would collaborate with them in designing the new baby range for Co-op. The new range needed to provide customers with a credible own-label alternative and encourage a wider shop, the aim being to grow category sales and engage shoppers.
Some of the team at Robot Food are young parents and were familiar with some the children's books I've illustrated, Oi Frog! and The Lion Inside for instance, and they felt my style would suit their idea for the new packaging design.
I developed 8 characters for the different stages for their nappy range. For the other baby products, wipes, sacks and cotton pads 4 further characters were developed that playfully suited the product, the cotton pads products for instance a lamb was developed in several poses, for the nappy sacks a baby skunk.
Brooke Fletcher, Packaging Design Manager at Co-op, said,
“As well as helping us raise the bar for the entire category, Robot Food’s work is also raising plenty of smiles. Playful, clever, effective – the range is absolutely spot-on for what we wanted to achieve. We now have a strong, cohesive, beautiful baby-care range designed for a new generation of parents that’s easy to navigate, and encourages consumers to consider a wider Co-op shop. We’re looking forward to seeing what Robot Food does next.”
Julia Allan, Senior Designer at Robot Food, said,
“We wanted to be on the same side as mum or dad. A lot of us are new parents as well and have all felt the pressures that come with the role. The last thing we wanted to do was project this unrealistic expectation of ‘perfect parenting’ – the category needed a wake-up call.”
Below are the character sketches I developed for the full range. Some were dropped or swapped as they felt were less suited to the age range. The baby Raccoon for instance was replaced with the baby Tiger and the baby Elephant was initially in the nappy range, he was used as a character on the baby wipes playing in mud (not poo).
I tried to keep the full colour roughs to a fairly limited colour palette that would suit the chosen background colour Robot Food had chosen.
The final characters were coloured in photoshop with a painted look to retain the children's book feel.