Media Contact: Heather West, (612) 724-8760, heatherwest@earthlink.net

Compass Design Creates Packaging with Pizzazz for Kitchen Dancer's Soup Mixes

MINNEAPOLIS (September 25, 2002) - How do you make a line of dry, prepackaged soups reach out and grab consumer's attention?

Bloomington, Minn. based-Kitchen Dancer's solution was to give their new Soup mix line a quirky name and a sassy attitude. But the proof of personality is in the packaging, so they called upon Compass Design, Inc.- a packaging design firm with a reputation for creating packaging with pizzazz.

"It was a lot of fun to work on the Kitchen Dancer brand," says Julia Hemphill, partner/sales at Compass. "Their whole approach to business is very much the same as is reflected on the Kitchen Dancer packaging: down-to-earth and folksy with a dash of exuberance."

With the brand name already in place, Compass Design Partner/Designer Mitch Lindgren and his team began to brainstorm.

"The client literally wanted this packaging to tell a story," says Lindgren. "So keeping that in mind as we worked on design concepts, we developed a logo with ties into the 'dancer' part of the Kitchen Dancer name and also flows easily into other, more text-driven parts of the package."

The logo concept created by the Compass team plays off of the music theme and features a hand-illustrated soup ladle in the shape of a musical note on a gently curving musical staff. On this same background, the Kitchen Dancer name scrolls in all lowercase letters.

The musical theme continues on the back of the package, where the logo repeats and is followed by a four-paragraph "story," which is preceded by another musical note and laid out in five boxed-musical stanzas.

"The fonts we chose for the packaging were all hand-rendered to look like an ordinary person's hand-writing," explains Lindgren. "We wanted the typography to reflect the friendly, informal style of the rest of the package."

With the back panel carrying Kitchen Dancer's story, the two sides panels provide cooking instructions and nutritional information. Next, the Compass team addressed the package's front label.

"We wanted something a little bit different from the other three sides, which were pretty text-heavy," says Tom Arthur, partner/designer at Compass Design. "So we designed a label which looks like hand-torn paper and uses the same type as the rest of the package to list each of the soup mix line's five flavors. We then added four, slightly askew, image-mounting corner pockets, giving the finished look of a hand-written, hand-mounted label."

Even with the four sides of the Kitchen Dancer package complete, Compass was not yet done.

"We saw another opportunity to further reinforce the client's brand and message," notes Lindgren. "The top of the box was untouched."

Unlike many pre-packaged, dry soup mixes, Kitchen Dancer soup box was designed for maximum stack-ability in a tight grocery shelf market. That design included a flat top.
"Since customers would have to look at the box top to open the package, we knew we had a captive audience," says Lindgren. "So we reinforced the Kitchen Dancer name by asking the question, 'What Dance Do You Do in The Kitchen' and offering a brief history of a different dance on each flavor: Mashed Potato features the Square Dance, Chicken Wild Rice features the ABC dance, Beefy Mushroom has the DEF dance, etc."

Compass also included an illustration of lined and numbered footsteps, similar to those seen in dancing classes.

"Compass did a great job on the package design," says Kitchen Dancer co-founder Maggie Mortsenson. "They really captured the essence of our company and our brand."

Kitchen Dancer Soup Mix is available at grocery and specialty food stores nationwide. Flavors include Chicken Wild Rice, Creamy Broccoli, Beefy Mushroom, Tuscan Tomato and Mashed Potato with Roasted Garlic.

Compass Design is a dynamic, Minneapolis-based design office specializing in comprehensive identity and consumer packaging programs for established and growing companies. With its experienced and knowledgeable staff, Compass Design strives for integrity and accuracy in its cost-effective, award-winning strategic design solutions. For more information on Compass Design, please contact Julia Hemphill at (612) 339-1595 or visit Compass Design's Web site at www.compassdesigninc.com.