&Walsh’s identity for health food brand Plenty is inspired by McDonald’s

Indoor vertical farming brand Plenty wants green, healthy, fresh produce to reach people who live in food deserts across America. Its previous branding was “actually very nice to begin with,” admits Jessica Walsh, whose agency has just rebranded the company, but “wasn’t scoring well on the warmth and approachability scale”. The company briefed &Walsh to create a more welcoming, accessible identity that felt “flavourful and delicious” and so, keen to veer away from the tropes of health brands, Walsh instead looked to their counterparts. “Fast food companies – McDonald’s, Wendy’s, etc – often use red and yellow colours, which have been shown to make people feel comfortable and hungry. So why not use this approach for healthy foods, make healthy food ‘crave-able’?”

Distinctively devoid of green, except the crisp photography of the salad leaves themselves, the brand uses a vivid pairing of red and yellow with secondary colours of purple and orange to pop out on shelves. “The competition all looks the same so it was very easy to make something ownable that stands out,” Walsh tells it’s Nice That. “We looked at doing the brand with only [red and yellow] but with the various flavour profiles it became a bit limiting, and also was a bit intense. We added the orange and purple which complemented those colours quite nicely and added additional warmth to the brand.”

Vital to its bold and friendly new image is the custom typeface, which is inspired by plants. A sans serif created for display sizes 32pt and above, it features “leaf-like” corners and terminals, tapered strokes with sharp endings, and curves as “round as a ripe tomato”. It also avoids straight lines wherever possible.

Combining these impactful colours and characterful typography, the agency aimed to create a “happy” brand. As per the original brief, &Walsh and Plenty carried out target audience testing on the logo, typeface and packaging throughout the process to make sure it was achieving what it set out to do. “The final work scored much higher on the warmth and accessibility testing than the previous brand work, and we were all proud with the quality of the design and typography, so it was a win all around,” concludes Walsh.