Fresh From the Field — Deja by Milk
This Fresh From the Field features a zero waste pet food with a confident yet playful design outcome from Milk. Designing for both pets and planet, the shape grammar of the Deja workdmark is an intelligent nod to the end consumer as the “face of the brand”. With illustrations punctuating the optimistic green typography, the packaging design is quite literally a playground for pets. Deja Barks loudly as it disrupts the pet food category, its sure to put a wag in design savvy pet parents’ tails too.
The Brief:
Deja is the story of a new breed of pet food company with a light paw print on the planet. Both super nutritious and extremely ambitious. Howling at waste, but loyal to food saviours. Made in collaboration with Foodstuffs New Zealand, deja is built on a big idea – saving good human food from heading for the bin and cleverly re:serving it as quality pet treats. A brand with a vision where pet food is never at the expense of the planet. With just two key stakeholders – our pets and our planet. With zero waste, zero nasties and minimum impact it’s for ‘pet parents’ and early adopters who not only want to feed their pets well but are also conscious of the environment.
The Design Response:
Deja is a brand full of character and personality, just like our pets, where purposeful meets playful. A brand where pet personalities make the purpose more engaging. It talks to you, and goes green in an untypical way, makes friends with a chatty voice and a personality that jumps up and jumps out at you.
Deja uses a few ingredients well, with no waste, just like the product itself. The way that type and illustration work together creates a playground for the pets. Green is the big protector, bright and optimistic, while deja’s pet characters are playful as they skip in and around the custom designed typography.
Colour is pared back and paired with white and black to keep things simple, while the illustration style is intentionally reduced to the core with zero fuss and maximum character. When animated the system becomes even cheekier, like the deja logo, cleverly using the accents of the ‘e’ and ‘a’ like whiskers and the top of the ‘j’ to double as an animals nose. It’s the face of the brand – literally.
A custom typeface, aptly named Max (your family pet and for maximum impact and personality) is pure bred for Deja with the ability to bark loud or purr quietly. It’s floppy ears and cuddly curves make it lovable, functional and robust enough to stand up to compostable packaging and recycled papers without losing any cut through or brightness.
The overall effect is an out of category approach to pet food branding that bucks cues of typical sustainability-based branding. Deja invites you into a more positive world with pet characters lovably alive, big in scale and attitude, simplicity in colour combinations, with no waste anywhere.
Deja is boldly simple, confidently different. It barks loudly and proudly invites you to join its movement. Making a statement, to add some bite to the clichés of the category.
