The Challenge:

Noosa Yoghurt came to us as a small operation, working out of a corner of Morning Fresh Dairy in Colorado. Their founder, an Australian ex-pat, took the recipe of her favorite yoghurt (yes, with an h) from back in Queensland, and made it with fresh Colorado dairy. It was unlike anything in the U.S. at the time, with a creaminess no other yogurt could match.

The Category:

Noosa wanted to stand out, and the competing products in the yogurt aisle all followed the same formula: white tubs, photoshopped ingredients, and sometimes depictions of “other desserts.” For the most part, yogurt was always shown as something you need to eat, not something you want to eat.

They came to us with the basic idea solidified: show the product, give it a tub that encouraged spooning, and let the packaging do the talking.

Going Big, Not Bland

Noosa’s visual identity needed to scale as they grew- and do so without losing character. This meant we needed a single illustration style that could handle representing everything from complex forms, like vanilla pods, as well as simple ones, like blueberries. After nearly half a year of countless sketches and iterations, we landed on a style that felt organic and hand drawn, while working within the confines of their packaging.

The result went against the conventional formula for yogurt. Packaging put color and flavor front and center. Taking a step further, little surprise and delight moments abounded- even the happy cows showed up to give a little word of wisdom.

The World of Noosa

While Noosa’s packaging is iconic, we We created an illustration library inspired by Colorado’s Front Range, that complimented the packaging illustration and offered subtle nods to their yoghurt’s rich texture.

It was important that we had a system flexible enough to allow each element to work across variety of media, from print, to in-store, to social, and to online campaigns. Each component, from the product photography, the logo, and the headlines could work within the limitations of a given format while still feeling like a cohesive creative unit.

The Website:

Noosa’s refreshed brand identity went live first with the new website, serving as a debut for the brand’s new visuals and voice. Our website went beyond updating their visuals- we tapped into their fan base and offered recipes, tips, and even featured shoutouts from their biggest supporters.

The Back Story:

In our early work for Noosa, we found inspiration in the Qantas travel posters from graphic designer Harry Rogers. Looking to adapt that sense of joy and adventure, we came up with the idea of “Collooradoo”, a representation of Noosa’s origins in both Australia and Colorado’s Front Range, and creating a stunt campaign inviting our audience to visit this mythical place.

While the stunt was never brought in, the visual language evolved to support our early conceptual work, bringing in the mountains, the windmill, and of course, the cows.

This laid the foundation to what would eventually become Noosa’s brand aesthetic, and the basis of our campaigns.

A Postmortem:

Our relationship with Noosa Yoghurt ended before their first campaign, and thus by the time the rebrand work went live they were signed with a different agency. Amazingly enough, the rebrand work was kept by the new creative team that came onboard (some of whom would later join us at Madwell)and was iterated on by their new agency when their first nationwide campaign would launch a year later.