The Chicago- and New York-based offices of Liska + Associates have distinguished themselves for quite some time now with lovely and distinctive packaging and identity projects for beauty, home and wellness clients. One of the latest is Primavera, a company seeking to expand its presence in the U.S. with products rooted in plant therapy.

"The client has existed in Germany for more than 20 years, and are brand leaders there in aromatherapy and essential oils. Now they are moving into skin care and wanted to be relaunched as a lifestyle company in Europe and the U.S.," explains Tanya Quick, design director of Liska’s New York office.

Quick defines the new identity as a logo refresh. The original ID had a very similar feel: The goddess featured in the identity is much the same, but the typography was very different.

"Primavera is the goddess of spring. She is critical to the heritage of the brand-she is really its seal of quality," Quick explains.

But the original mark-which was designed in four color plus gold-was hard to print, especially in one color. The type in the original logo was so small that the seal had to be reproduced at inordinately large sizes in order for it to read properly.

Because one of the client partners is a feng shui master, some aspects of the design could not be changed. For instance, the goddess had to stay at the top of any design (packaging, ad, whatever). Also, the goddess could not be cropped in on.

But certain color and proportion attributes were changed. Colors were made more natural in hue, and the proportion of the artwork to the type in the logo was altered, to give a stronger presence to the artwork and improve legibility in smaller applications. As the goddess image is complex, the designers kept the typography very clean and simple, using the German font DIN, a face noted for its legibility

The feng shui aspects of the project did present challenges, but Quick feels that those requirements, combined with modern marketing ideas that Liska designers presented, created a much improved final design.

"We do really notice and pay attention to the psychological ramifications of a design. Does it feel right? We, as designers, are rationalists. But we can also use this other tool to develop the proportions and harmonies in a design," she says. "It's like a dual language that speaks of legacy and modern at the same time."