Designer Interview: Josh Handy, Method Products Inc.
Josh Handy
The creative director of industrial design talks about how package design is a key part of Method’s marketing strategy.
By Jennifer Kwok, EditorAt Method Products, the word disruptor is considered a compliment. The personal care company bestows its employees with playful in-house titles such as “Shapeshifter” and “Artsy Smartsy.” Josh Handy is Method’s creative director of industrial design—otherwise known at Method as “Disruptor.” And that’s exactly what Handy does. Using design, he shakes things up on mass-market retail shelves, giving Method’s packages their famous modern industrial looks that stand far apart from all other packages sitting on mass-market shelves.
If you see something of Karim Rashid in Handy’s design aesthetic, that’s no surprise. For three and a half years, Handy was head of product design for Rashid’s design house in New York City. While at Rashid’s, Handy helped design the now-iconic bottom-dispensing dish soap bottle for Method, a Rashid client. The job was Handy’s very first in packaging design. Until then, he had focused on industrial design. While at Rashid’s firm, Handy ended up working on a number of projects for Method.
When Handy and his wife had their first child, they wanted to be closer to family, so Handy left Rashid’s and moved to Sydney, Australia, to be closer to New Zealand where he grew up. The family stayed in Sydney for two years before moving back to the United States. While transitioning, Handy bumped into “the Method guys” at a trade show in Chicago. “We got to talking,” he says. “At that time, Method had just gotten to the point in size in which it could think about employing a full-time designer.”
Method’s new Marine Naturals body care line. The products’ ingredients are 95% natural and include such sea-inspired elements as sea salt to purify the skin. The packaging is recyclable.
While on a job interview for another company in San Francisco, where Method is also based, Handy met with Eric Ryan, one of Method’s cofounders, for a beer. Long story short, Handy didn’t get the job he went to San Francisco to interview for. However, he did get the designer job at Method and has since been working for Method for more than two years. (His wife, a designer as well, also now works for Method.)
When asked what he likes best about Method, Handy says that to the company, design is as important as marketing. “Method is very rare among consumer product companies,” he says. “In many companies, the design department serves the marketing department. At Method, design is a partner to marketing. New product ideas and product strategies are just as likely to come out of the design department as they are to come from the marketing department.”
Compared with bigger personal care and home care companies, Method does no advertising. Instead, Handy says, “the packaging is our advertising.” Hence, Handy strives to ensure that Method’s packaging is instantly recognizable on shelves. “We try to make the packages as interesting and as engaging as possible so that people will talk about them with their friends.”
The egg-shaped Method Baby hair and body wash package features a plastic cap that doubles as a cup for rinsing away suds.
While Method’s packaging looks very “Method,” the packaging doesn’t scream brand-name. That is, there are no labels shouting loud marketing messages. “We realized that these types of packages live in people’s houses for months on display,” says Handy. “The last thing that you want is for your bathroom or your kitchen to look like a supermarket aisle, with your packages selling ‘50% more! or Now includes blah blah!’ That works on the shelf to get you to buy the products perhaps. But at home, why do you need these messages all over your packaging? You want things to be as simple as possible and not stress you out—to not try to sell you in your own home.”
In Method’s case—and in Handy’s case—package designs speak for themselves and have a much more important job to do. “We try to keep the branding as minimal as possible, to keep the products as décor-friendly as possible,” he says.
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