A Head for Hot Design
Over the last few years, it seems like products such as salsas, spaghetti sauces, condiments, and soups have really buffed up their package design game.
Walking down those aisles at the store is actually pretty exciting for me (don’t judge). And there’s one label that has consistently caught my eye every time I walk down the salsa aisle and that is Pain is good’s salsa.
Eye-catching Goodness
The one thing I really like about this design is the most notable aspect of it-the gray-scale heads screaming at me. At first look, you can understand that they’re supposed to be screaming in pain because of the spicy salsa. However, the more I look at these faces, the more it looks to me like they’re trying to sing a high note at the state choral competition. It is a nice identifier of the flavor of salsa, though. I don’t have to look at labels to make sure I’m grabbing the correct one, I just have to grab the one with the backwards hat guy.
In terms of branding, I’m not so sure about it. I mean, I like the connection between the heads and the flavor and between the color on the label and the level of spiciness. However, I’m still not sure if “Pain is good.” is what you would consider the brand name or not. Amazon lists Pain Is Good as a brand. Yet, doing a quick Google search for “Pain is good hot sauce” yielded OriginalJuan.com’s page for their family of products under the name “Pain is good.”
This may not matter to everyone, but if I like a product and want to tell someone about it, I want to be able to tell that person what brand it is in case they wanted to purchase it online or something. In my opinion, this is just too confusing, especially when “Pain is good.” isn’t even highlighted much as a brand name. Sure, it is a different font, but it’s the nearly the same size as the spiciness level and the “All Natural” text on the right. It just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth (horrible attempt at a pun only slightly intended).
Font Face (Get it?? Face?? No? Okay then…)
Speaking of the font of what we now consider the brand, it is one of my favorite things when a font has more than one shape for a repeated letter. It means that some amount of extra time and consideration was put into the detail that the 2 o’s in “good” and the 2 i’s looked different and not like it was a free font someone just downloaded. I’ve also always been a fan of a typewriter-style font, especially when it is on a light paper-bag color. For me, it conjures up images of a grill, flames, heat, etc.-perfect for a salsa or hot sauce.
A cleaner, less messy typewriter-style font is featured on the back with a little story about the origins of the flavor, straight from (Original?) Juan. The ingredients list matches this in both font and size, which makes it easy to read. An interesting side note; the included story on the back uses the Oxford comma. Bonus points for them!
Conclusion
In total, there’s not much that I dislike about this design. Sure, the brand name is kind of weird and there’s some major text (including the flavor) that is sideways, which might make some people turn their heads to read it. But in total, it’s a very attention-grabbing design that almost literally screams at you. And if you have to send someone to the store to get a jar of it for you, you can simply tell them to “just grab the one with the bearded guy screaming on it.”
