Reimagining British heritage packaging for Roberts Radio

The brief

Reimagining a British icon: the Roberts Radio brief.

Ranabe Chorlie, a freelance packaging designer, was commissioned to develop new packaging concepts for Roberts Radio, a classic British audio brand. The brief was to explore the brand's heritage while considering future trends and colour, material, and finish options. Additionally, they wanted to look at opportunities for developing packaging for future brand collaborations.

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The Designer’s vision

Heritage meets innovation: envisioning the future of Roberts Radio.

Ranabe envisioned a packaging system that would honour Roberts Radio's rich British heritage while positioning it for contemporary relevance. His creative direction focused on creating a consistent brand language that could be applied across the product range while being adaptable enough to support special edition collaborations with other iconic British brands.

The core concept centred around the theme "Best of British," which would serve as a foundation for both the standard packaging and collaborative editions. This approach would allow Roberts Radio to celebrate its own heritage while creating natural partnerships with other historic British brands.

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The Spring Solution

Leveraging Spring's toolkit to develop and visualise packaging concepts.

1. Research and inspiration

Spring's explore function provided Ranabe with an extensive range of disciplines and packaging inspiration. This allowed him to quickly gather reference materials from premium electronics, lifestyle, and heritage brands to inform his design direction.

2. Concept generation

Using Spring's generative tool, Ranabe rapidly created initial brand directions and packaging concepts. This allowed him to explore multiple design approaches simultaneously, testing different colour palettes, typography treatments, and packaging structures for the Roberts Radio line.

3. Design refinement

After generating concepts, Ranabe selected the most promising designs for refinement. Chosen renders were tweaked using the edit tool, along with being retouched in Photoshop. This hybrid approach allowed Ranabe to maintain creative control while benefiting from Spring's efficiency.

4. Artwork extraction

Artwork extractor tool enabled Ranabe to save a 2D SVG file from the 3D generated render. With this, he was able to reference the colour HEX codes and fine-tune the gradient. It also allowed Ranabe to have an idea of where branding and graphics would be placed. These extracted files served as the foundation for further refinements in Illustrator.

5. High-quality renders

Spring's render capabilities helped Ranabe create realistic product visualisations in contextual settings. This assisted with art direction for photography and additional brand assets for marketing. These renders helped communicate how the packaging would look in real-world environments.

6. Visualising future collaborations

For the collaboration concepts, Ranabe used Spring to visualise how the Roberts Radio packaging could be adapted for partnerships with iconic British brands like William Morris, Barbour, and Harris Tweed. Spring's Editor and 2D Mockup tool enabled him to generate realistic mockups in a fraction of the time traditional methods would require, bypassing lengthy artwork mapping and scene composition processes.

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The results

Precise visualisation: bringing Roberts Radio's heritage to life

Spring enabled Ranabe to efficiently develop a comprehensive packaging system for Roberts Radio that included:

1. A core packaging design featuring the "Best of British" theme with a distinctive gradient and typography treatment.
2. High-quality lifestyle renders showing the products in context, which assisted with art direction for photography and additional brand assets for marketing.
3. A series of collaborative packaging concepts showcasing potential partnerships with William Morris (featuring botanical patterns), Barbour (using the iconic tartan), and Harris Tweed (incorporating herringbone textile patterns).