Dennis Minton
Creative Direction, Illustration, Graphic Design
This project was completed when I was working full time as a Senior Designer at Procter & Gamble in 2023. I have since gone back and revamped the project to bring to life the concept more holistically versus what was completed.
Old Spice Epic Legend Variant 2023
The Brief
The Red Collection from Old Spice houses some of its most well known and best selling variants including Captain with it's sea faring world of burley and barrel chested captains doing battle against monstrous sea creatures like the infamous Kraken. Including a new variant into this line up needed to not only match the look, tone, and feel of the red collection, but create a variant that could live up to or even exceed the popularity of its best seller. This design needed to span across a horizontal deodorant stick label, a vertical shower gel, and a vertical spray deodorant while using the same illustration style and principles.
The Outcome
I wanted to create a variant that lived within a rich visual world that could easily fit into the ethos of the brand. A world of camaraderie, where boys are becoming men, and redefining what being a man means in the modern world. Can you juxtapose the over the top masculine world of King Arthur with the environment of today and play on how ridiculous it could be? Could boys be overcoming modern day trials ( first job interview, going on a date, dealing with acne) and have these daily occurrences suddenly transform into an Epic Legend when they apply their deodorant?
Filled with valor and confidence knowing they smell great gives them the courage to conquer their epic quests.
I left Procter & Gamble before seeing where the team would take this variant in terms of ad campaigns and marketing, so I decided to do a speculative project to bring to life some of the ideas I had.
After rounds of iterations with the Europe and Global teams, we landed on a design that incorporated illustrations of a Knight's helmet and shied, as well as some small motifs in the empty space to drive a holistic appearance with the rest of the Red Collection. The design needed to work both in a horizontal format with a mirrored approach, and a vertical orientation with one element up top and one below the badge. The request from the team was to incorporate gold as a variant color as a way to stand out as a special new design within the collection. Along with the multifunctional partners, we were able to choose different gold foils with slightly different effects and finishes to draw some contrast between the two golds to give the design extra depth.
With this new design variant, there was also an opportunity to include some additional icons at the bottom of the body spray packaging to further drive differentiation with the competition. Old Spice is known as a perfume quality scent brand, and these icons sought to bring in some further PODS including using the spray for total body, 0% aluminum salts, and a technology that helps preventing the scent from fading throughout the day.
