McDonald’s changes packaging globally, this time going to be minimalist?
If you have been to McDonald's recently, have you found that it has quietly "transformed"?
Yes, after 4 years, this global fast food chain giant finally changed its packaging.
Recently, the international design brand Pearlfisher officially unveiled their brand packaging vision system for McDonald's . This new design will be launched in all stores around the world within two years.
Saying goodbye to the gorgeous publicity of the past, this time McDonald's has also begun to be minimalist and fresh.
"Minimal" McDonald's new packaging is here
In the past, McDonald's food packaging was either food pictures or large texts, but this time they have directly become various simple illustrations.
For example, on the box of "Maiyu", you can only see waves of blue waves, matched with a clean white background, with a simple name written on it.
The breakfast sandwich "Maifen" only has a big egg yolk, but it is also very reminiscent of the rising sun in the morning.
The body of the Coke cup is full of bubbles, and there are different illustrations on different drinks, which visualize the taste of various drinks.
On Whirlwind’s packaging, the ice cream and biscuits have become small pink-orange dots, mixed in red waves of different widths, bringing a little dreamy color.
The packaging of the Big Mac directly becomes a cartoon-style cross-section of a hamburger. The grains of sesame, lettuce, and beef on it look very rich, but the presentation is still clean and simple.
The original fries box, which is already very simple, has not changed much. It still has the red shell. There are also straight fries stripes in the box, which looks childlike and cute.
However, the French fries are drawn in the fries box. This operation makes netizens call "good guys":
I just hope that McDonald's will not take the opportunity to lose less French fries!
Some packaging designs have been updated before in China.
Among them, chicken wings and various chicken burgers are painted with cartoon chickens of different colors outlined in stick figures, which seem to run over the bag in the next second.
The double cheeseburger directly dropped two slices of flowing orange cheese on the packaging, which seemed to capture the attractive core highlight of the fort.
In addition, McDonald's also announced the launch of a self-developed artificial meat burger McPlant . This is also the first time McDonald's has set foot in the field of plant burgers.
Looking at it as a whole, this time McDonald’s new packaging selects the most iconic and recognizable part of each food, and then uses multiple color schemes, simple flat illustrations, and basic geometric shapes to present it. People can think of what's in the box at a glance.
This modern graphic design is refreshing, and the overall vision has become brighter, relaxed and lively.
Matt Sia, Creative Director of Pearlfisher, said:
We hope that through simple illustrations, the packaging can be easily identified, minimized aesthetically, and most importantly, emotionally pleasing.
So for consumers, this is a design with great visual memory.
As for the staff, the systematic visual design also helps them to identify food quickly and improve work efficiency.
Of course, for McDonald's, they have once again activated their brand through a new visual design system. The new style design is actually a timely change for McDonald's to adapt to the current trend.
Prior to this, McDonald's had done many interesting iterations in order to "advance with the times."
McDonald's packaging that has been "following the trend"
Since its founding in Chicago, USA in 1955, McDonald's now has nearly 40,000 branches worldwide and has changed its packaging design many times during the period .
▲ McDonald’s first packaging design in 1955 was a chef named Speedee, which also meant fast food
In 1961, the color company Pantone selected the popular colors of that year: cinnabar orange, bright pink, grass green, lemon chrome, cyan, bright purple. That year, McDonald's also confirmed its own bright iconic. Color matching: red and yellow.
At that time, under the hands of architect Stanley Clark Meston and assistant Charles Fish, the most classic golden arch shape was born.
In 1983, McDonald's product categories became more and more abundant, so it also produced more outer packaging. In order to keep food fresh and warm, McDonald's introduced foam packaging boxes this year. But it didn't take long for the foam box to suffer a great public relations crisis in the market because it was not environmentally friendly.
Republican Senator Robert T. Stafford of Vermont pointed out that the main chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) component in the McDonald's foam box would seriously damage the atmosphere and cause environmental pollution. Soon McDonald's foam box will withdraw from history.
McDonald's also began to learn lessons and became more concerned about current social trends.
So in 1990, McDonald's began to use brown paper bag design, and has been using it ever since.
It was not until 2003 that paper bags began to return to white.
This year is also a year when McDonald's packaging design closely follows the trend of young people.
They put forward the marketing idea of "I'm lovin' it" (I like it), and directly printed group portraits of contemporary young people on the packaging, showing their diverse lifestyles.
From trendy young people on skateboarding to astronauts wearing space hats, McDonald's also became one of the popular foods in the hearts of young people at that time.
However, in 2008, "healthy" began to become a new food trend. Fried fast food McDonald's was also regarded as the initiator of obesity, so over time, McDonald's became a representative of "junk food".
Although it cannot change the nature of food, in order to cater to this wave of health, McDonald's also tries to make its food look healthier.
So they display a lot of fruits and vegetables on the packaging. The hamburger box is covered with green vegetable leaves, and the French fries box is filled with bags of newly unearthed potatoes, which is very green at a glance.
In later packaging design, McDonald's also repeatedly emphasized elements such as recyclability and sustainability, including the first use of paper bags, the use of strawless cup lids, and the packaging paper has always had a recycling mark.
The social trend is evolving rapidly, and then the wave of mobilization swept the market and brought great turbulence to the fast food industry.
In 2013, McDonald's then attached a QR code to the packaging bag. As long as you scan it, consumers can see the nutritional parameters of the food and many other information.
In order to promote sales and attract more consumers, on some special festivals, McDonald’s will also cooperate with major trend brands or fashion IPs to launch limited packaging and souvenirs, such as Minions, Doraemon, Pokémon, etc. .
It wasn't until 2016 that McDonald's launched the previous generation of packaging design: Dynamic Design.
Red, golden, purple, orange, light blue, bright green, rose red and other large fonts fill the bags and boxes, making McDonald's packaging appear bold and bold, and it is getting cooler.
In fact, every time it is updated, McDonald's is not only to follow up with the society and fashion trends, it is also closely related to the company's revenue development, and packaging has always been a "speaker" at the forefront, a vane-like existence.
When the packaging design of an explosive product is at the center of the topic of young people and under the lens of mobile phones, it often means that they are becoming a new "social currency".
The design of McDonald's replacement this time is also in the new trend.
Concise and flat new design style
The rapid progress of the Internet has made the world flatter and younger.
Therefore, in recent years, we can see that major fashion brands have simplified their logos and changed their fonts to simpler sans-serif fonts.
▲The old font on the left, the new font on the right
YSL's handwriting has become "sans-serif", Céline's French style has become "sans-serif", Burberry has also changed from the original knight image with serif fonts and various complex elements to "sans-serif".
McDonald's new packaging font is also sans serif, which reflects the trend of increasingly modern, concise and flat design.
This trend also makes brands themselves more inclusive. When they walk into more diversified social networks, they can promote wider communication and be easier to understand by the public.
The designer of Hamish Campbell, executive creative director of McDonald’s packaging design, also said :
"Simplification" is a very important opportunity for McDonald's. It will allow McDonald's to resonate widely in different markets.
The aesthetics of the times are changing. In 2016, Subway hired Joe Tripodi, the former chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola, to try to get him to recover the declining performance and revive the brand .
When Joe Tripodi took office, he first made Subway's original rich design combination logo more simple and modern.
▲The upper is the old version, the lower is the new version
In January this year, Burger King, who had fallen in love with McDonald's for decades, also kept up with this wave of packaging design trends.
They removed the original iconic blue arc in the Logo and replaced it with a simple design with only red-orange tones and round fonts. At the same time, a series of visual designs such as food packaging, restaurants, and employee uniforms were all updated simultaneously.
▲ The left is the old version, the right is the new version
This is also the first time Burger King has rebranded in 20 years .
They also try to convey to consumers that they are a brand that is constantly developing and following new trends.
The new visual framework of these giant brands, while constantly improving brand recognition, often also affects the way global icons are expressed.
New catering brands take this opportunity to rise to the wind.
Shake Shack , a popular hamburger brand that originated from the streets of New York, quickly became popular around the world. They not only advocate the health, green, and environmental protection advocated by contemporary young people, but also attach great importance to quality in terms of environment, service, and food itself.
Of course, what attracts young people more is their unique packaging. It looks simple, but very clean and clear. The pattern design is very flat, but it is suitable for modern people's fashionable aesthetic.
The fierce competition in the fast food industry has never stopped. But in this rapidly changing era, the importance of packaging design is becoming more and more unignorable.
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