Filtrete™ & 3M Air Quality Packaging Re-design

PROJECT OVERVIEW

With the start of Filtrete™ Smart Air, the brand team wanted to unite all packaging across retailers to create brand consistency and systems for future products. This includes all global air quality products that are under the 3M brand.
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Principle Brand Designer: Terry Kosnick
‍Senior Brand Designer: Katlyn Echeverri
Designer: Alex Geller
‍Marketing Lead: Carrie Sazama

MY CONTRIBUTIONS

Assisting in Icon development, brand colors, communication hierarchy, participated in lifestyle and product photoshoots, led retailer requests, organized and project led packaging art production timelines, created global brand guidelines.

Note: To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of 3M.

THE CHALLENGE

When working with multiple retailers there are many challenges we came across. Each retailer needed different imagery and areas reserved for claims. Keeping everyone happy but also staying with our brand architecture and structure was difficult. Our design layout had to be translated for multilingual and international packaging.

THE APPROACH

Before begining a massive re-brand and packaging, we needed to align with business on our goals and scope. Constantly working with our business team, global partners, and retailers, we created an amazing system that is super flexible for any packaging situation. When creating US, we would parallel path our GEO designs to make sure they could translate well.

Project Goals

1.

Logo stays current from previous update

2.

Cohesive brand consistency

3.

Reserved areas for
retailer claims

4.

Reserved area for lifestyle imagery

5

Use new particle icon dashboard

6.

Flexible for Smart products

BRAND PURSUIT #3

Make healthy living happen.

BRAND PURSUIT #2

Clean the world for better well-being.

BRAND PURSUIT #1

Make people Air Aware.

Packaging Wireframes

Step by step we collaborated with the business team on the questions below. It was easier to break down areas to focus on with wireframes. We already knew assets that needed to be included like the logo, MPR number, icon scale, product name, filter size, and room for 3 claims.

What percentage of brand vs. product details?

What is our brand color?

How close do we stay with current MPR colors?

Which areas can retailers own for claims?

In Store Shopping Experience

Once we had our MVP, we mocked up a store shelf at our local Lowe’s where we interviewed people on how they shop. Most of the feedback was really positive and found that most people shop by their size and color. The icon scale was very helpful when deciding between different MPR Numbers.

Brand Equity Matrix

This is the typical matrix we create for all 3M brands. It shows a quick snapshot of our assets, brand tone, look and feel. Many of these assets were created from the original brand just updated fresh colors, photography and iconography.

Filtrete Matrix

3M Matrix

Old Filter Packaging

New Core Packaging

New Smart Packaging

Full National Packaging

US Filtrete™ Product Family

International Product Family

Learnings

I’m pretty proud of this project and the journey our team went through, I learned too much so here is a list of a few highlights:

How to become a design advocate when collaborating with business and retailers
Creating & managing timelines
Wireframe packaging layout first so the team can focus on information hierarchy and not the design
How people shop when looking for filters
Global knowledge for imagery, language and unique customer needs based on culture
To be very detail oriented especially when handing off brand guidelines to GEOs
To have more design brainstorms with teams outside of the project, fresh perspective
Anything you need to know about air quality