The Project: Brand Design with strategy and Packaging Design
Goal: Build trust and connection with their audience for their hard-working cleaners.
Commonfolk Co. is a modern, eco-conscious cleaning product brand offering simple, hardworking, household cleaning essentials. This is sustainability that doesn’t guilt-trip, confuse, or scream 'minimalism in a cold museum,' but instead shows the benefits of reusables over single-use items. They focus on providing their customers with something that gets the job done well, rather than a bunch of confusing claims and jargon.
The issue is...
They were stuck in the cheap luxury loop. To non-luxury buyers, they appeared premium and too expensive, but to high earners, they felt cheap and inexperienced. They thought looking premium would reflect thier hard working products, but in reality they were speaking to nobody. Their overuse of nature graphics and sustainability metrics was jarring and confusing as hell to their customers, who only understood the basics.
The solution I came up with
So when the founders came to me for help, we stripped it down to the basics: what they sold, why it was different, and whom they sold it to. When stepping back and looking at it, we realized they didn't fit with the luxury, higher earners crowd, and didn't want to. Their problem wasn't their graphics, but they were trying to stay in a room that wasn't meant for them, where they didn't belong.
So we pivoted their messaging to realign with their real target audience: hardworking, middle to low-income families who don't have the time between work and the kids' soccer practice to spend cleaning messes with half effective cleaner, or constantly replacing what they bought. They needed something that worked as hard as they did, without a lot of hassle of replacement. While also using a product that was safe for their home and family.
After this reroute in direction, all of the pieces came together. Their messaging was realigned to fit their mission and values, with the graphics to help communicate it. Building trust from within their branding, not by obscure claims, and clarifying their once-confusing refill system.
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After many hours of work...
This is what I came up with
