Packaging revamp for a fun, vibrant sports brand.
Client
Spikeball
Year
2019
Services
Packaging
Timeline
4 weeks
Diving headfirst into a brand new, super niche vertical.
When I pitched my services for the Spikeball packaging redesign, I hadn’t ever really heard of the brand or product before. It was shortly after accepting the contract that I started seeing how much of a community and following the brand was experiencing. Taking on this packaging redesign was both exciting and a bit daunting.
From the project brief, I understood Spikeball wanted some clear, functional fixes for the packaging, as well as a new and creative juice injected to the design. Considering I’m not a very “sporty” guy and I’d never heard of the product before, the first step I took was doing some hands on research.
Gathering inspiration
As I often do, I started my process in local retail stores. Walking through aisles, taking photos with my phone, catching weird looks from customers and employees, and capturing anything that felt relevant and helpful for this project. I was specifically searching for products and brands with a bold, vibrant shelf-appeal, and even better, those in the sports, fitness, and wellness vertical.
I captured photos of everything from dart guns to trash cans. As my brain absorbed the sights of the consumer landscape, I found myself gravitating to products with a balance between clean, bold imagery and small, intricate product details. As I synthesized these examples in my head, I could see Spikeball needed to both fit in and stand out within the space.
Clarity, simplification, and brand emphasis.
The original packaging (left) relied heavily on photography assets as panel backgrounds. This photo background technique, when used selectively, can be effective but the number of photos used, photo similarity, and photo repetition created an aesthetically jarring appearance. Overall, there was quite a bit of visual monotony which needed to be broken up in favor of the brand and visual clarity.
In the redesign (right), I focused on reducing visual clutter, brand emphasis, and intentional use of space. I did quite a bit of work to clean up any photos used and remove distracting background elements from the shot. I also recognized the Spikeball yellow was an important brand element and it wasn’t being emphasized enough. The redesign features bold use of color and a rebalancing of text and visual elements.
Full sets and stylistic variants
After the success of the Pro Set redesign, Spikeball came back with the request for me to redesign the rest of their suite of products, including the standard Spikeball, SpikeBouy, and Spikeball Rookie. They were looking for a full, consistent rollout of the new aesthetic I delivered in round 1.
As I approached this new family of designs, I also worked to incorporate some advanced graphic design techniques to add depth, differentiation, and visual intrigue. Using custom shadow, space, and 3D layering on each front panel helped to give the designs a facelift and additional curb appeal.
Conclusion
The work I did with Spikeball to refresh the look and feel of their packaging was transformational. It started out as a straightforward project to fix some functional content and visual issues, but morphed into a full visual refresh, taking the brand and packaging to the next level. It was very inspirational and exciting for me to work on a project that would ultimately land on store shelves in the retail outlets near me.
