Head of the week: The packer

 
Röné Bringold and his agency D'SIGN Bringold & Cueni want to position packaging even more as the most important advertising tool at the POS. 
 
"Pursuing the path we have chosen with determination and yet not straying off the beaten track": That is the claim for D'SIGN Bringold & Cueni AG in Biel-Benken. As one of Switzerland's largest and internationally active design agencies, the agency has been writing "successful packaging design history" for 25 years. 70 percent of D'SIGN's work is packaging and brand design. But some customers also have their corporate design or, if the occasion arises, a poster, display, flyer and, of course, web design designed by the agency.
All orders are handled directly between the agency and the customer. Ideally, D'SIGN is involved in large projects or a relaunch right from the briefing stage, together with an advertising agency. Bringold is always surprised at how the packaging is incorrectly positioned. "Packaging is often underestimated. Yet it is the final decisive factor at the POS."
Especially for products where there is little advertising budget, such as private labels, it is therefore all the more important that the packaging design "works and is good". A new packaging design solution is not only intended to last for one or two years, but must be able to survive on the market for three to five years before a new revision is launched. "It used to be up to eight years, but the cycle has become shorter."
And where are the trends heading? When it comes to food, it is very important that the product is displayed with a serving suggestion wherever possible. "You have to show the consumer: What can I do with this product?" Simply depicting a bag of rice no longer sells today - unless it is a correspondingly highly positioned specialty, for example.
Consumers don't go to the store with the intention of buying Arborio rice or Floralp butter, for example. "They write rice and butter on their shopping list and then pick the best-looking pack," says Bringold. Because the consumer effectively makes the purchase decision in the store, the packaging has to appeal to them. "They have to stop in front of the shelf because of the packaging."
Food photography and skillful retouching are "half the battle of packaging". Customers are very aware of beautifully designed cookbooks or artfully photographed lifestyle magazines. "Skillfully done is in today. We also feel this when designing packaging." It has to convey a modern and fresh attitude to life. The shapes are usually limited to functionality. In the cosmetics sector, however, the shape is more important than for food. With food, on the other hand, the shapes have "generally become more feminine. Also the materials, typography and aesthetics."
Brand architecture is an important part of the work at D'SIGN. When a brand has several sub-brands, stylish solutions have to be found. Such tasks are particularly important for Hengstenberg, a major client in D'SIGN's portfolio from Germany.
This company from southern Germany has grown up with sauerkraut. Today, 40 million tins of the classic sauerkraut tin are sold every year in Germany alone. In theory, every second household has such a tin. This one was designed by Bringold. Does that sometimes make him proud? "It's actually not a bad feeling to stand in a store and discover perhaps 30 products that you have designed yourself," says Bringold, pleased with the success of his work. However, he clearly sees himself as a craftsman. "We make handicrafts, not art."
An important customer in Switzerland is Ricola. Bringold's studio has been the lead agency for the design for 23 years. During this time, the packaging has "changed a lot, but always in small steps".
D'SIGN also works a lot for Coop with Qualité et Prix and the new positioning of its own brands. However, the major distributor's design is split between five large agencies in Switzerland. "That means no cluster risk for both."
D'SIGN supplies print data, all documents and ready-to-use final artwork. The customer can be guaranteed the desired quality for all work steps from A to Z. English star agencies sometimes only do the design, as do some advertising agencies. For Bringold, its full service is therefore an argument why its work is also in demand internationally.
40 to 60 percent of D'SIGN's capacity utilization comes from Germany. Bringold also feels ideally positioned geographically in the border triangle. However, the international business also includes country-specific packaging for the whole of Europe, Taiwan, Singapore and China. Ricola is supplied to 120 countries, Hengstenberg already to 40.
A total of 15 people work at D'SIGN in the three divisions of administration, production and graphics. D'SIGN also trains its own graphic designers. This is something that is particularly important to Bringold.
Röné Bringold himself has worked in five different professions. He comes from the printing industry, trained as an advertising assistant at Sawi and also trained as a repro photographer and typographic designer. He founded his own agency 25 years ago as "Atelier für klassische Werbegrafik". Before that, he worked for various companies on the client side, most recently for two years as advertising manager at Knauf Switzerland, a trading company with products for interior design.
The first major customer was Ricola - and it has remained to this day. This is how Bringold "gradually got into packaging design". Initially as a one-man company. Then he had to keep expanding when Gaba, Elmex, Aronal and Coop also joined the customer base. At the same time, he also ran an ASW agency at the beginning.
Twelve years ago, when the agency already had around a dozen employees, Christian Cueni joined as a partner. Cueni previously worked at Schmidlin und Partner in Reinach, later known as Futurebrand, a subsidiary of McCann-Erickson. What was once the largest packaging design agency in Europe no longer exists.
Former designers Röné Bringold and Christian Cueni are now mainly managers. However, both are also regularly involved in the creative work process. This is also one reason why many customers explicitly come to D'SIGN.
Regular workshops are also an important customer argument at D'SIGN. There, marketing people learn how to handle print documents - "What are open files? Why can't a Word file be placed in a final artwork?" More than 280 interested parties have attended these courses at D'SIGN to date. The agency has thus successfully positioned itself as an "interface between design and marketing".
You can get to know Röné Bringold's private side on his website www.bringold.com. He mainly publishes his own photographs there. He describes hunting for images all over the world as his great passion. He has already organized six exhibitions with his own photos. He also enjoys jazz. Bringold is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Basel Jazz Festival - and has of course already designed various posters for this event and carried out the relaunch of the festival brand "off beat".
Andreas Panzeri