Brand Cohesiveness has been an elusive thing for us. If you’ve been following us for a while you’ve undoubtedly notice the changes we’ve made over the past two years to our look and our branding. We started out as Elderberry Life, and became Norm’s Farms when the name Elderberry Life wasn’t working too well for us. Norm’s Farms, named after my father-in-law to honor his vision for the family farm, has been a great name and we are sticking with it! We’ve had one heck of a time getting a cohesive look for the products we make from elderberry, though. Some of that was due to just plain bad luck, and a lot of it was due to the fact that design is not one of our strengths. We just don’t know much about it. The firm that designed our jam and jelly labels came up with a look we love, but it doesn't pop off the shelves and the image of Norm is hard to see, as is our logo. When we lost that firm we found a new one that we felt equally good about. The new firm went to work on our first priority, which was creating labels for our Extract and Wellness Syrup. The plan was to complete those labels and then to circle back and incorporate the jams and jellies for one cohesive look. Design firm number 2 was not able to finish their work with our jams and jelly because they went to work in-house for their biggest client. In other words, they fired us! Gently and very nicely, but the outcome was all the same. So, for the past year or so, we’ve had one look for our jams and jelly and a completely different look for our supplements. Our current designer, Julie Nelson Designs, has been working hard over the past 6 months or so to get us one cohesive look for all of our products and we are so close to the finish line. Our first run of jam under the new label came out a couple weeks ago. These labels really pop off the shelves, and we love the faint image of the elderberry plant, flowers and berries.
Reworking the labels for our Extract and Wellness Syrup seems to have been an easier process. If all goes well, our next run of Extract and Wellness Syrup will also be under Julie's newly designed label, and we will finally have achieved the brand cohesiveness that has eluded us so far. Julie did a great job of tweaking the existing Extract and Wellness Syrup labels so that everyone would recognize them on the shelves. And, when all of our products are sitting together on one table, they all look like they belong to the same company now. We are so excited to finally be at this stage, and look forward to enjoying our cohesive look for a good long while! Next up: designing a trade show booth that really says Norm’s Farms and makes you want to stop by and chat with us for a while. We have some great shows we are doing this spring and can’t wait to put our new look to work.
The “disconnected” look of Norm’s Farms for the past year or so...
Our updated supplement labels are on the left.
New Look for Norm’s Farms Jams and Jelly
Our new cohesive look
Reworking the labels for our Extract and Wellness Syrup seems to have been an easier process. If all goes well, our next run of Extract and Wellness Syrup will also be under Julie's newly designed label, and we will finally have achieved the brand cohesiveness that has eluded us so far. Julie did a great job of tweaking the existing Extract and Wellness Syrup labels so that everyone would recognize them on the shelves. And, when all of our products are sitting together on one table, they all look like they belong to the same company now. We are so excited to finally be at this stage, and look forward to enjoying our cohesive look for a good long while! Next up: designing a trade show booth that really says Norm’s Farms and makes you want to stop by and chat with us for a while. We have some great shows we are doing this spring and can’t wait to put our new look to work.