Packaging Redesign at Giant Foods

This is my new favorite breakfast cereal. It's a knock off of a more expensive brand, and it's healthy as hell!! I started eating fiber select 3 weeks ago after picking up two boxes of the stuff on my bi-weekly grocery run.  

Here's the box: 

When I went back to my local Giant  for my 2nd pair of boxes, I was surprised to find the package fundamentally different.


It took a little while for me to note which was the newest design because I purchased them out of order (and I had completely forgotten about the new branding/logo that Giant and Super Fresh recently undertaken).  This is the box from my second grocery run:

I scrutinized both boxes for a long time and came up with the short list of essential differences. The redesign has several things that the original do not have:

• off-center placement of logo
• a background on which the cereal bowl rests - giving it some context
• quantifiable nutritional information on the lower third of front panel
• active writing  on the back panel
• tilted orientation and splashy milk to simulate movement
• title case for the headings instead of all-caps
• less fruit
• a closer resemblance to the brand that Giant's copying

It was an interesting experiment to review the box designs. I even took the images over to another designer's house and made her go through the exercise with me.  The majority of the changes made a lot of sense to me. One still niggles at me though. The move from more fruit to less - my thought is that they want to showcase the healthy twigs of bran and leave them in the forefront, but I just can't be sure.

Maybe next week I'll try to contact their art department to find out; I won't be able to sleep well until I get some answers.

-cheers y'all