A summary of my creative process and a look into the journey for our 2012/2013 WWE® packaging re-brand for Mattel's action figure toy line.
In 2012 we were tasked with refreshing the WWE® line-look to deliver new-ness at retail. The previous 2 years were very successful and WWE® continued as the category leader, but we wanted to continue to innovate and get our branding even closer to WWE® 's TV content.
As creative lead on this packaging refresh, I began by focusing first on our “bread and butter” packages, the 6 inch scale basic figures. This is our first round of concepts on the basic blister card package. Concept sketches by David Selvadurai
We then took the four concepts we felt had most variety as far as placement of key branding elements and began to flesh out how those elements could work together.
These were our final three shapes which also had three distinct areas to communicate the Superstar name and important information to the customer. We also created three different treatments for the key art of the Superstars.
Working with several in-house teams, we finally decided to use white as the primary brand color to help the brand stand out at retail. Having the name/brand bar on the right side of the package allowed information to be found easily on the pegs at retail. We then further refined and finalized the photography style. We wanted our key art photos to have more action-packed poses than previous years to really showcase the WWE® action. On the right is our final result for the 2012 basic package look. It was impactful, injected newness to the brand, and most importantly,
made us stand out even more from the competition.
I extended the new line look to work on our other key items such as the 2-figure Battle Packs and the collector-focused ELITE COLLECTION figures.
I was later asked to continue this successful 2012 rebrand into 2013. We made some small tweaks and enhancements. We also slightly reduced the size of our basics 6 inch figure blister card package. This was mainly in an effort to reduce Mattel's carbon footprint and make our packaging more GREEN.
The final 2013 branding and line look across many of our different structures and price points.
