Jind Fruit Co. Packaging Design
Complete packaging line for premium fruit grower out of Osoyoos, BC included bags, clamshells, trays and boxes.
Creative Direction: Tugboat Group
Art Direction/Design: Chris Young
Art Direction/Design: Chris Young
Tugboat Group re-branded Jind Fruit Co., a third-generation independent fruit grower in Osoyoos, which led to numerous other design projects for Jind Fruit. With a Buyer’s Guide, website and a few packaging components completed, much work was to be done to design boxes, trays, clamshell labels and bags for Jind’s full product range.
A vintage look and feel for the Jind Fruit brand had already been established through earlier work. This new packaging continued to refine those summer themes; summer nights, summer love, and summer flings. This vintage feel would be a little softer, more romantic — confident, but not trying to hard.
The Jind brand leveraged using craft stock and the ChromaPak proprietary printing process using opaque GCMI inks, which help give the packages their vintage look. This is not your average CMYK with spot colours job.
With a creative platform already established, we were able move through our deliverables list in the order the produce came off the trees. Starting with the multiple Summer Nights™ Cherries boxes, clamshell labels and bags; then Summer Love™ Peaches boxes and trays; multiple Summer Fling™ Select Fruit (nectarines, apricots, Italian prune plums and grapes) boxes and trays; and finally Summer Breeze™ Apples boxes.
The Summer Love™ Peaches 5lb retail trays stacked two-deep. Little details like the red insert tray made the package complete.
End panels of the Summer Love™ Peaches 5lb retail trays.
The Jind brand leveraged printing on brown craft paperboard stock and International Paper’s ChromaPak printing process ( > learn more about ChromaPak printing here ), which help give the packages their vintage look. It also introduced it’s own set of challenges. Using ChromaPak, the images and graphics are split into different colours and use special opaque inks that work better with the craft paper. There was a quite a learning curve to this technique, and each image required special work to make them print well. Our printers really had their work cut out for them on these boxes, and admitted that this was some of the most intricate work they’ve ever printed.
Jind Summer Fling™ Nectarines trays stacked 2-deep.
Summer Nights™ Cherries bag and clamshell with the Summer Fling™ Italian Prune Plums clamshell.
Summer Nights™ Cherries bag.
Summer Nights™ Cherries clamshell.
On boxes where there are mis-registration issues, like we see detailed here, you’re treated to an old-school printing appearance (like letterpress), almost as if it was meant to look like this.
Overview of some of the Jind Fruit boxes. From top left: Summer Nights™ Cherries tray; Summer Love™ Peaches lattice box; Summer Fling™ Select Fruit lattice box; and all the boxes stacked together make a unified product line.
The Summer Breeze™ Apples boxes were printed on a bright white paperboard box; going straight to export where markets demand the bright white box that showcases 'quality fruit from Canada'.
DISCLOSURE | While I did design and produce almost all of the Jind Fruit packaging shown here, I did not design it alone. This was a large job, with tight time-lines, and longer than usual turnaround times due to the proprietary ChromaPak printing process and thus all of us in Tugboat’s design department had a hand in the design, and much more-so, the production of the roll-out of boxes. I designed the first boxes and clamshell label — establishing the look and feel, and ensuring the standards for the CFIA compliant text were implemented. I worked closely with the printer to ensure our vision would come to life. From there, I oversaw the final work, double-checking CFIA compliance for all the text and content legal requirements, and continued working with the printer to ensure consistency across more than a dozen boxes, clamshell labels and bags.
