Vitamins aren’t a scam, supplements can help with your immunity, and herbal medicine isn’t made up of old wives’ tales. Still, the wellness space has become overcrowded with preachy, pushy brands that have moved the market away from the natural and nutritious and into a world of branding and packaging that feels like it’s either yelling at you or is all flash and empty promises.
Wooden Spoon Herbs is a brand founded in 2014 by clinical herbalist Lauren Haynes. The brand began as a small farmer’s market booth but now sells for the mass market, and with that tremendous growth, the brand needed a packaging refresh. The new packaging, designed by Gander, combines educational materials with a clever, eco-friendly design. In addition, the brand genuinely practices what it preaches, from utilizing plant-based inks and recyclable glass to FSC-certified labels and using recycled materials for shipping.
“I had to ask myself, ‘Is any CPG brand truly sustainable? If not, why not, and how do we get as close to that mark as possible?’ The packaging materials we use for some components have a bright future and are seeing lots of progress,” shares Wooden Spoon Herbs founder Lauren Haynes. “For others, we use, like our rubber-topped pipettes, not so much. We did our best—our packaging is a blend of compostable and recyclable materials, leaving the final waste around 1% across the entire product line.”
In addition to keeping the packaging sustainable, the design is natural and organic. The color palette found inspiration in the natural colors found on Earth, including rich ambers, dark browns, and vivid green hues. “We felt that owning a singular palette would not only help on the shelf but make it easier to launch future products with ease,” says Gander’s Co-Founder Mike McVicar. “While we opted to use illustrations to distinguish between products rather than color, you’ll see that the brand comes to life off-pack with a wide color palette inspired by the vivid spectrum you can find in nature.”
Beyond the colors, the brand was also encouraged by the “back-to-the-land” movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. This movement saw a wave of eclectic aesthetics and diverse use of typography. For example, Gander’s typography design for Wood Spoon beautifully fuses an all-caps, retro-type treatment with a more elegant sans-serif font. The fusion of these two typefaces creates the sense that the brand is ingrained in nature and uplifted by the past.
Wooden Spoon beautifully proves that plants are medicine, and the packaging design feels comprehensive, organic, and charming. No matter where consumers might be on their wellness journey, this brand promises to meet them where they are and grow along with them in a sustainably approachable way.
