Curt’s Special Recipe Rebranding and Packaging
Curt’s Special Recipe is a Midwest-based company best known for their salsas as well as other tomato-based products. Based on a confusing personal experiences with their products, I reimagined the brand’s identity—including their packaging, website, and more—while maintaining the heart of what makes Curt’s Special Recipe special.
Besides practical considerations, another aspect of the branding I wanted to address was the perceived price point. The original branding, while successful at conveying a sense of being homemade, seemed more in line with a budget product, while Curt’s Special Recipe’s is more of an artisan product. Because of this, I also aimed to redesign the product in a way that better aligned with its higher price point while maintaining the brand’s humble, rustic charm.
However, because of the brand’s thirty year history, I also wanted to keep recognizable aspects of the original design. The deep red text on the red-tinged, off-white background is a softer take on the original design’s pure black on stark white while still maintaining the high contrast. And the iconic circular shape in the die cut label remains and is even more highly emphasized with the bold colors of the spice scale.
Final redesign with brand colors and better contrast
While working as a grocery stocker, I noticed during one shift that I’d put several jars of salsa in the wrong place without realizing because I hadn’t noticed that they were different products. I only noticed the large bold print of “salsa” and not the much smaller circular label specifying the heat level. That was the original inspiration for reimagining the branding of Curt’s Special Recipe. To address this potential source of confusion, my goal was to create a system that would clearly indicate the differences between products at a glance.
In my initial redesign, I used both color and a leveled scale to differentiate the heat levels; however, some of the colors clashed with the rest of the monochromatic color palette and had issues with contrast, so I instead opted for a design using only the levels.
Original design with only plain text
Initial redesign using colors and levels
The initial new logotype took inspiration from the tomato stem “chimney” on the tomato slice “cabin,” using curved forms tapering to sharp points and with the letters in title case to balance tradition with warmth. However, the result was out of line with the rest of the branding and some of the letters were ill-suited for the style. Instead, I took inspiration from historical American woodtype to create letters with bold reverse contrast and solid square forms softened by rounded corners to complete the picture of their hand-crafted, Midwest origin.
For the reimagined logomark and type, my goal was to increase the versatility of the logo and better integrate the brand’s identity. The original logo’s format is very wide, with the variation being only slightly narrower, limiting its applications. This wideness, and the lack of a logomark, leads to some inconsistencies in their branding, like their Instagram profile photo using a photograph of a jar, their Facebook an elaborate illustration incorporating a jar, and their favicon being a simplified graphic of a jar.
To create a logomark, I identified three potential focuses of the brand: their rustic character, their family friendliness, and their heritage. For the first direction, I took inspiration from their beginnings in a cabin kitchen as well as the tomatoes at the foundation of all of their products; for the second, I combined their various ingredients into a hidden smile; and for the third, I combined a tool of their trade with the essential ingredient of spice in a badge style. After feedback, I proceeded with the first direction.