Path Helps Reinvent The Noodle Pot For The Instagram Generation

Instant noodles might never be the same, and thank the heavens. The bold and innovative design for Noodl Plus highlight how inventive the noodles themselves are — infused with turmeric & activated charcoal. Consumers will instantly be drawn to the design-forward packaging, that features a split-down-the-middle approach. On one side, the consumer sees the colored noodles that the can contains, while on the other gives them a visual feast: a representation of a decadent meal that the noodles will be flavored like. No longer are noodle pots going to be considered the food of college students: Noodl Plus is here to change things. 

Award winning design consultancy Path, have partnered with Westmill Foods to transform the noodle-pot shelf with a vibrant and healthy new brand. The coloured noodles of Noodl Plus are infused with charcoal, turmeric and other super nutrients to bring visual excitement, taste and health to an otherwise stale category.

Westmill, known for their range of authentic market leading ethnic brands and exceptional quality noodles for both consumer and food service, asked Path to help expand their consumer brands portfolio. Path is a cross-over agency built to develop, design and launch new products and brands faster and better in every dimension. They have won awards for convenience food brand creation and have an expert team forecasting the future of foods in their journal, Map. An agile approach, from concept creation, screening and crafting to design, through implementation and activation, enabled Westmill to work with them all the way from insight to the products on shelf.

Path was able to rapidly validate Westmill's hunch that a totally new, striking and healthy noodle brand would resonate with the Instagram generation. In collaboration they crafted and designed concepts guided by the client’s consumer research and informed Path’s own design insight series, Map.

“As we wrote in “Visual Delicacies’, The Taste Revolution (Map 2018) social media was the perfect place to support the launch of a food brand as good for your eyes as for your body and soul.” Ollie Moore, Strategy Director, Path

A social led strategy meant, more than ever, the brand and design needed to be visually direct and coded to create distinctive assets for communications. ‘Noodl Plus’ was conceived to ‘feed the soul and live life with colour’. The wonderfully coloured noodles needed to be a key differentiator of the product, so Path found a way to hero the nests whilst also communicating details of flavour and benefits in a unique and campaign-able way. This was all distilled into a single, central brand icon that can work on and off-pack on social and in activations.

“The brand’s split highlights the exciting tension between the super colourful noodle, using only natural ingredients, and it’s strong health benefits and story. At the centre of the split is a crafted, bold logotype with a recognisable shorthand ‘O’” – Rohon Bhuyan, Design Director, Path

The mouth-watering photography brings the flavour story to life and heroes the boldly unique noodles to deliver real taste appeal. The full identity was designed in house, along with a complete world of brand assets ready for online and on-shelf! Path’s in-house production and print teams built and proofed print ready artwork and pre-production sales samples.

Eight amazing noodle colours in eight delicious pot recipes launch in Summer 2020. They are also supported by packs of the coloured noodles alone for the scratch cook looking to add a plus to their plate.

“At Westmill we are experts at making top quality noodles and as such we were in a unique position to bring new life to this category. We believe that the pot noodle market is in need of a makeover that injects some positive nutritional values to a traditionally not-so-healthy category. To that end, we have made several decisions that set us apart from everything else you can find on the shelves! Our noodles are high in protein, source of fibre and of course beautifully coloured. All our innovative recipes are plant based, delicious and different to anything else in the market, a truly non-compromise product. Path were the perfect partners, start to finish, for this kind of innovative project” - Westmill Foods, spokesperson

Bio

Thomas Herman co-founded strategic design consultancy Path in 2003. As Marketing Director, he is responsible for developing business opportunities and achieving the independent group’s vision to be creative partners for brands ready to take a different path. He is a passionate advocate for sustainable solutions and their ability to bring about positive change in the market and our lives.

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