Coupon Redesigns Give Cereal Brand Currency.

With a small in-house design team under pressure to turn projects around fast, seemingly insignificant things like coupons, forms and trade materials often have less attention paid to them than consumer ads and packaging.

Previous Nature’s Path coupons were a good example of that.

Earlier coupons were printed on lightweight glossy stock and featured large areas of flat colour, a headline and a stock product image. They felt cheap, looked cheap and lacked sophistication.

The brief from the internal client was to create a line of coupons that better supported the brand’s premium positioning and both looked and felt like money.

After reviewing a wide variety of currency types for best practices in colour, patterns and complexity, I created our own line of coupons.

Money is purposely made to be complex visually. And the complexity is truly amazing the closer you look. Intricate patterns on top of intricate patterns. Incredibly tiny (but still readable) type layered over other type. And even the images of people featured on the bills are seldom only one colour or situated apart from the rest. It’s all about complexity.

With that in mind, I created our own currency-style coupons featuring complex colour transitions, overlayed patterns, textures and images of important Nature’s Path staff, starting with Dag Falck, the Nature’s Path Organic Program Manager who was featured squatting in a farmer’s field.

The new coupons were printed on an uncoated toothy stock and had the feeling of real money.

The coupons were a huge hit with internal management and retailers alike. Retailers said they found the coupons looked sophisticated and warm. — Just like the good people at Nature’s Path!