I went to pick up dog food with my wife last week and as we were checking out I saw this bag of dog food in the “new” section of the pet store. I was immediately drawn to it for how unique it’s design was in comparison to typical dog food. I have inserted a picture of Pedigree dog food for comparison.

What is striking about the design choices it bucks the traditional conventions of dog food branding design. There is no happy smiling dog, no picture of the food, no comparison picture to human food to make you feel better about feeding your dog little rocks. There is a dog, but unlike most dog food brands, it actually uses a mutt instead of a purebred dog like the golden retriever on the pedigree bag. It even has a blurb about the dog on the back and the name of the dog on the front. This is combined with a striking use of muted colors not typically seen on dog food. Classics like yellow, red and blue (which our dog food Orijen favors in its packaging) are replaced with black and silver, which actually is slightly reflective as they just did not ink the bag in spots to let the metal effect show through. All these elements come together to create a design that stands out as being perceived as a step above the rest. The colors invoke quality, sharing more in common with the packaging of a health supplement or whiskey than dog food. The design, unfortunately, wasn’t good enough to get us to buy it though, because no matter how good your design is, I’m not paying 60 bucks for only 25 lbs of dog food.