Steven Noble Illustrations

Driscoll’s, the leading provider of fresh berries, unveiled a new logo and label design that will be used throughout all areas of sales and marketing. The new look will begin to hit the U.S. market within the next few weeks.

The new brand identity will be incorporated in various brand communications from labels on individual clamshells, to the trays used to ship the clamshells as well as signage at the company’s headquarters. The new brand identity will unify and strengthen the look of Driscoll’s destination Berry Patch displays in retail stores.

The company tapped San Francisco-based Michael Osborne Design for the task. Osborne and his team retained key brand and label design touch points, such as the familiar triangle shaped label, and the vibrant yellow and green background colors, while restructuring messaging in a hierarchical fashion on the labels. The new label also incorporates an illustration, created by Steven Noble, of a farmer in a field of berries and most important, berries overflowing in a basket.

“This is the evolution of this brand,” said Douglas Ronan, VP Marketing at Driscoll’s. “The Driscoll’s brand is one of the most recognized brands in the produce industry. Our heritage is in strawberries. Now, by using all four berries on our package, we are reinforcing our leadership position in fresh berries while highlighting the special efforts of our farmers.”

Remember the mid- to late-1990s? When everyone and their mother came up with a .com and an idea of delivering the wackiest products or services through the magic of the Internet and the funding of bottomless venture capitalists? For example, you know, lobsters. Lobsters. By Internet. Delivered by FedEx. Makes perfect sense. Started in 1995 by Providence, Rhode Island entrepreneur Andrew Rock, Lobster.com has been delivering fresh lobsters — only the freshest and Maine Certified — for more than a decade. Being early adopters, means that they got a fantastic URL and they recently put that to good use with an identity redesign by fellow Providence business, Nail.

In a bold move, the logo doesn’t spell out the word “Lobster,” and instead it simply shows you one, an immediately identifiable lobster that works as a very charming rebus and turns a URL that could look like one of those generic catch-all web sites full of ads into a kind of leader URL. Nail hired illustrator Steven Noble to create the custom woodcut illustration of a Maine lobster and then added a slightly distressed, serif “.com” creating an amusing fusion of vintage illustration and contemporary technology. I don’t normally think of the Internet as a place where I would get my lobsters, not that I buy lobster ever, but now I know where to get some shipped right to my house after I’m done posting to Brand New.