Curt’s Special Recipe Rebranding and Packaging
Curt’s Special Recipe is a Midwest-based company best known for their salsa as well as other tomato-based products. Based on a confusing personal experience 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.
The original Curt’s Special Recipe logo has limitations in terms of application. The version used on the jars is very wide and the variation with the central word rotated is only slightly narrower. They also don’t have a logomark, and so the brand is inconsistently represented in graphics, like using a photo of an actual jar as their Instagram profile picture, an elaborate illustration incorporating a jar on their Facebook, and an icon of the jar as their favicon. In the reimagined logotype and mark, the goal was to better integrate their brand identity and allow for a wide variety of applications at different sizes and ratios.
I started with three directions for the logomark: one inspired by their beginnings in a cabin kitchen and their focus on tomato-based products, one evoking a sense of heritage with a nod to spice, and one aimed towards a family audience based on their combination of ingredients. After getting feedback, I chose the first to proceed.
Original design variations
While working as a grocery stocker, I noticed during one shift that I’d put several jars of salsa in the wrong place by mistake because I hadn’t noticed that they were different products. I only saw the word “salsa” in large bold print and not the much smaller circular label specifying the heat level. That mix-up was the original inspiration for doing a conceptual rebranding for Curt’s Special Recipe.
The main issue I set out to address was differentiating the products at a glance to prevent confusion on both ends of the grocery store experience. At first, I tried a system using both a leveled scale and color spectrum to indicate heat level, but the clashing colors and low contrast for some of the labels led me to instead focus solely on the scale and change the colors to fit with the rest of the monochromatic design.
Original design with plain text
Final redesign with more contrast and consistent colors
For the logotype, I initially was inspired for the style of the lettering of “Curt’s” by the shapes of the tomato stem chimney on the tomato slice cabin, using curved forms tapering points with the letters in title case to balance tradition with warmth. However, the end result clashed with the rest of the identity and some of the letterforms were ill-suited for the system, so I went back to the drawing board.
Inspired by historical American wood type, the new lettering was created with bold reverse contrast and solid square forms with straight edges softened by rounded corners for the same combination of tradition and warmth, but this time in a way suited to the letters and consistent with the overall identity of their hand-crafted, Midwest charm.
Final redesign logotype variations
Original redesign with color spectrum
In addition to this user experience consideration, another aspect of the branding I wanted to address was the perceived price point. While the original branding fit their story in terms of conveying the small, hand-crafted operation, it gave the impression of a budget rather than an artisan product. In my rebranding, my aim was to make the design that better aligned with the higher price point while maintaining the sense of their humble, rustic origins in a cabin kitchen.
Since the brand has a thirty year history, I also wanted to make sure I kept recognizable elements from the original design. The deep red text on the red-tinged, off-white background is a softer take on the original 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 emphasized with the bold colors and contrast of the spice scale.
Original redesign logomark variations
Original redesign logotype variations