Project Overview
Baby Village is one of Australia’s most iconic baby stores. A leading specialty retailer with a reputation for their leading range of products (which include more boutique items sourced directly from overseas) and incredible service standards.
However the category is dominated by a number of key players who all look, feel and say the same things.
Here’s how we helped breathe new life into the Baby Village brand, and helped them to stand apart in a category lacking distinctiveness.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Matt Newell - CEO
Chris Scott - ECD
Reeshma Bhanji - Creative Director:
Alex Edwards - Co-Client Services Director
Jordan Banco - Project Manager
Project Brief
With ambitious plans to expand the business and up their online presence, we partnered with Baby Village to modernise the brand and create a distinct visual identity.
Baby Village is a beloved baby store located in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs with a growing online presence. But over the years, they’ve faced increasing levels of competition from large players, such as Baby Bunting and Baby Kingdom. Feeling the squeeze of these larger players and their significantly larger marketing budgets, our job was to help Baby Village carve out a distinct identity in a category lacking distinctiveness.
Project Innovation/Need
Based on the insight that the transition to motherhood is often extremely selfless and a time when expecting mothers abandon their individual style in favour of functionality, we set out to create a contemporary brand that could appeal to a more style conscious shopper.
In order to achieve this, we flipped category conventions and leaned heavily into fashion techniques. With so many brands feeling like they were designed for babies (soft palettes, images of babies, soft & rounded fonts), we explored a variety of bold colours, progressive slab serif fonts and distinctive geometric iconic forms as a means to imbue a modern, contemporary sentiment that would speak to more of a progressive, unisex customer.
Design Challenge
Our design challenge was straightforward: how do you design a brand that defies category conventions, while still appealing to new parents about to embark on one of life’s biggest adventures (and often looking for reassurance and guidance along the way!)
This work is a masterful balance of style, playfulness and fashion techniques while still managing to inject a warmth expected (and required) for category success.
Effectiveness
The client feels the new branding absolutely delivers on objectives by; delivering significant cut-through versus competitors/the category, and is incredibly successful in engaging shoppers who still want to be leading their best, sassy, sophisticated lives despite being mums!
And whilst the new Baby Village branding is yet to be launched to the general public via its new website (& socials) circa early Aug ‘22, the client has engaged in a program of soft launches with prospective customers at a series of events which has resulted in overwhelmingly positive feedback around the branding being refreshingly bold, contemporary and differentiated.
Graphic Design - Three Dimensional
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in traditional or digital visual representation of ideas and messages used in packaging. Consideration given to: clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience; the approach, including marketing and branding concerns, the dynamics of the retail environment, environmental considerations, and legal requirements; the component parts of packaging graphics such as colour rationalisation, information layout, feel and tone of illustration and photography, and finishes, and how they are used in isolation and in relation to each other; and the relationship to the anatomy of the structural design.
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