Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Clementine Art and Crayola Crayons



Pr*tty
A clear case of targeting your audience and hitting your mark.

Sh*tty
Another clear case of thinking parents think their kids like sh*t like this. It’s mind boggling that Crayola can so openly crap on their heritage. The “just keep adding stuff” methodology is in full effect here and working as well as it ever does, which is never.


Many thanks to P*S* Reader and colorful character Travis Crisp for the images!

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10 comments:

  1. Sorry, but to me a box of crayons should not be so plain. Granted it is a nice design, but the point of making a crayon box so bright and vibrant is to grab the child's attention, whom it is marketed to, and to help reinforce the fact that it is filled with waxy play things that are just as colorful!

    The only thing I am not really all that fond of is the "Made with Solar Power/Preferred by Teachers" banner on the Crayola box, outside of that it does not look any different from the boxes of crayons that I, and, hell, even my parents, had when we were kids.

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  2. To be clear, I do like the clean look of the Clementine box, I just don't see it as something being marketed to kids. Now, put this design on a wine bottle, cleaning product, or even a box of Clementines, and we would be talking some seriously sharp looking packaging for the target audience!

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  3. I'm going to respectfully disagree with the above posters on this one. I can say without hesitation that my daughter would prefer the Clementine box over the Crayola box, partly because the simplicity and expansiveness of the Clementine box says more about creativity and openness than the jumbled mess of the Crayola box does. And she would color the box first, which is cool, and probably the point.

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  4. But Kirvi, for the most part, kids don't buy their own crayons. Parents do. And the Clementine packaging targets a certain kind of parent very well. The Crayolas target the kind of parent who think their kids are stupid and like stupid looking shit.

    It wasn't that long ago that Crayola Crayons used to look like this: http://retro51blog.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/64-count-crayons.jpg

    If you can't see how dramatically they've effed up the most recent packaging, then we need to talk.

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  5. Wow, all I got back from my simple opinion was some bullshit hostility. Thanks for that.

    Allow me to re-state what I said earlier:
    "The only thing I am not really all that fond of is the "Made with Solar Power/Preferred by Teachers" banner on the Crayola box...."

    They updated their logo and added a banner, which I made clear I didn't like, outside of those two things, their boxes have not changed that much. The general layout of the box and color scheme are the same. I bet if you were to look into it a bit more, they only added that banner onto the box around Back-to-School time, and is not something they will keep on there permanently.

    "But Kirvi, for the most part, kids don't buy their own crayons. Parents do."

    True, but allow me to point out the fact that most of the time it is kids who first take notice and then ask their parents to buy them, thereby making their target audience both the kids AND the parents.

    "The Crayolas target the kind of parent who think their kids are stupid and like stupid looking shit."

    Completely uncalled for and childish comment. The fact that you would assume that parents would think like that based solely on the fact that they would buy this particular box of Crayolas is ludicrous. You are not taking into account brand loyalty at all in that statement. Parents are more apt to buy something they recognize, and even used as a child, over a plain box of crayons whose name they do not recognize.

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  6. "If you can't see how dramatically they've effed up the most recent packaging, then we need to talk. "

    Since you brought this up, if you really wanted to make this a fair conversation, post up the box you linked to and the newer box and then ask for opinions on it. Until that time, this is not really a completely fair comparison.

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  7. OK Kirvi, next week, I'll post the new Crayola box along with a few images of boxes past. We'll see what people think.

    God is in the details, Kirvi. You can't say "other than the logo, and the banner and the 'made with solar power' badge it's just like the old one." You're wrong, first of all. But secondly, that's like saying, "That sandwich was good, once I got rid of all the stuff between the bread." It's up to designers to have an editing eye, not consumers.

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  8. "OK Kirvi, next week, I'll post the new Crayola box along with a few images of boxes past. We'll see what people think."

    I personally think that makes for a more "balanced" comparison. In this instance it would have made more sense to compare two minimal style boxes to each other and then determine which was the worse designed of the two.

    If you don't mind, I would like to Photoshop out the banner on the current one and post a link with both boxes side by side to more clearly show what I mean by the whole "not that different" aspect of my comments. I am only saying that they are not that different on the assumption that the banner was placed there for Back-to-School time only. If it is to be a permanent fixture to the box, then I would agree that it is way too much for something that should be simple and direct.

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  9. Here is my comparison of the two. Take from it what you will.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahbellydancer/6217005073/

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  10. I would also like to point out that at one time the Crayola boxes looked like this:

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oeG9C6pQPXY/TiM-7gRhDuI/AAAAAAAAL6Y/Uh6eOBT6SX8/s1600/396px-Rubens500.jpg

    and this:
    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cs4GyrlacYI/TiNA9mYC53I/AAAAAAAAL6g/C7f5iS4FjI4/s1600/679px-Crayola_No_6_progression.jpg

    Though I am fond of the vintage look myself, the one above is far less busy than the ones in this post. :)

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