overhauling a brand: annabelle breakey for lay's
Seldom do many of us stop to think about how the images on food packaging come to be there. As consumers, we take for granted that dozens of bags of chips line a grocery store shelf, as if divined without the involvement of dozens of hands and minds. Having recently gone through an extensive visual-systems rebrand with Lay’s, photographer Annabelle Breakey knows this isn’t so—she knows exactly how the chips fall.
“The marketing team created the visual system and set the standards to describe the feel, and then we came in to execute that vision,” Breakey explains of her role in such a large and known brand’s overhaul. Breakey photographed the various Lay’s varieties in a way that provided the marketing team a kit of parts for use on packages, advertisements, and other materials. She used her own toolkit to ensure the product looked flawless, careful with the depth of field and purposefully raking texture so that each element looked realistic, vibrant, and delicious.
The rebrand required quite a bit of care; while consumers may not be clued into every detail on a package, a good brand will be subliminally recognizable from even the smallest cues, and to change them too much is a danger. “Everyone knows salt and vinegar is the blue bag,” Breakey remarks, “so we couldn’t change that, but we did need to freshen up the vinegar bottle.” “I think the key to being a successful food photographer is to create the vibe for the market. You have to make the images work for the industry they’re used in.”
With Lay’s a part of the international PepsiCo brand, Breakey has enjoyed seeing her work around the world and in the many different contexts she and the marketing team imagined; for example, at the World Cup! To see more of Annabelle’s mouth-watering photos, head over to her site.