Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Personal Care
Jonathan Product Line
by Jonathan Product LLC
In today’s marketplace, most companies deal with speed-to-market pressures, but few have to deal with them in front of an audience of millions. Such was the challenge hairstylist Jonathan Antin and his staff took on. Last year, Antin made his debut in “Blow Out,” a reality television show aired on the Bravo network. The show documents his high-stress experience of opening the Jonathan Salon in Beverly Hills while launching his first hair care line, Jonathan Product.
To launch the Jonathan brand, Antin worked with his business partners, Jonathan Products’ Tina Hedges, executive vice president of marketing and development, and Beth Ann Catalano, executive vice president of sales and education. “One of the biggest challenges was timing,” says Hedges. “The clock was ticking against us from the moment we started, and we couldn’t fail to meet the deadline. With ‘Blow Out’ following our progress, we absolutely wanted the brand to be in stores by the time the show went on the air. We had very limited time to develop everything, including finalizing all formulas, designs, graphics, copy, and trademarks.”
Antin, Hedges, Catalano, and design firm–supplier Zorbit Resources worked together to design the line’s packaging, which mostly features clear tubes and PET bottles. Zorbit initially sourced the stock components from Berlin Packaging, but Zorbit currently produces them in its factory in China.
The packages’ standout features are their graphics, which were designed to showcase the products’ transparent colors. Because Jonathan’s formulas are based on purified deionized botanical water and contain no synthetic ingredients or colorants, the company decided to leave most of the formulas, as well as the packaging, clear colored to convey the notion of purity to the customer.
“We wanted customers to be able to see through the bottle to subconsciously reinforce the idea of water,” says Hedges. In fact, the design team drew inspiration from the high-end look of the Voss water bottle.
Despite this goal, some marketing and ingredient copy had to appear on the packages. Zorbit devised a way to put graphics on the packages while maintaining their transparent look. In order to fit text on the front and back of the clear bottles, Zorbit based the graphic design on a vertical layout. “We decided to treat the bottle as if it were split vertically down the middle, and half would be left clear,” says Scott Oshry, vice president of creative development for Zorbit Resources. The Jonathan name was placed in a metallic color bar that runs up the left side of the packages. On the back of the packages, the rest of the copy was written in a column positioned directly behind the Jonathan logo on the bottle’s front. This tactic left one side of the bottle completely transparent so customers could clearly see the product within. The color bars are color-coded by product type.
As far as package shapes go, the design team took cues from Antin’s love of simple, sleek architecture. “We decided to go for very streamlined, elongated circular shapes that were completely flush from cap to bottom,” says Hedges.
Oshry adds, “From a design standpoint, it was really important for us to create packaging that captured what Jonathan was about. His love of traditional, mid-century modernism was the reason we chose metallic copper, gold, and silver colors for the color bars. These are semiprecious materials that we felt captured the sense of modernism.”
Awards panelist Maiken Erstad, design director for Dragon Rouge, says, “The packaging definitely has a structured, calm look to it.”