Fruit farmer David McCallum joined the Design Council’s ‘Designing Demand’ programme to help take his business up a level.
Andy Cripps, who acted as design associate on the project says, ‘It’s a really nice family run business that has expanded and is well known locally. It might sound like a stereotype but dads might come down and do a spot of fishing while the mums and the kids go the café and do some shopping. The next stage was for the business to find more markets for its products, and re-branding was key to that.’
McCallum says it was something the family had considered before. ‘My father had said perhaps we should use the family name. People are much more interested in where their food comes from these days and who is behind it. Using our name gives people something to connect with,’ says McCallum.
And Cripps adds, ‘Bank End Farm didn’t mean anything beyond the local area, but I think people are interested in a family run farm where everyone really cares about what they do. It gave us something to build a brand on.’
Cripps helped the McCallums understand what design and branding could do for the business. ‘I knew nothing about design,’ says McCallum, ‘but then I met Andy and he really got me thinking. I started going around Tesco looking at labels and packaging and what worked and what didn’t.’
With all the family happy to use the McCallum name, they needed to find a design consultancy to produce a new identity and create a website. ‘My role was to help them understand that this wasn’t going to be a £50 job down at the local printers but that it needed serious investment,’ explains Cripps.
Cripps helped McCallum draw up a shortlist of local design firms and write a brief. The family selected Vivid Creative, who are based in Sheffield. Cripps says, ‘David and Vivid’s Managing Director Gerry Acari just hit it off and really got on well together, so it was a good basis for the project.’
Fruit farmer David McCallum knew that he needed a new identity for his family business and appointed Sheffield-based design consultants, Vivid Creative, to work on the brand, but he is the first to admit he wasn’t an easy client: ‘I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew that I would know it when I saw it,’ he says.
Cripps was on hand to offer help and advice and together they explored seven different approaches with Vivid. Finally, McCallum settled on a cockerel weather vane as the company logo. ‘We looked at lots of options during identity conceptual stage,’ says Dan Lindley, Vivid’s Creative Director. ‘The weather vane provides a sense of place and also provides a familiar and iconic symbol that people can relate to. It’s got a sense of quality and honesty and the cockerel is a leader and dominant figure.’
He adds, ‘the family name was used to establish it as an assured and respected business built on family values and heritage.’
If he had been unsure of the sort of identity he wanted for the business, McCallum had a clearer idea of what the website should look like. ‘I looked at lots of sites to see what worked and what didn’t. I found one I liked but thought we could do better.’
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