NOT A REBRAND, A FIRST DRIED PRODUCT
The Mushroom Barn is a family-run mushroom farm in the New Forest, UK, with a loyal local following. So this was never about reinventing the brand. It was about extending it. For their first dried product, the challenge was to design packaging that feels unmistakably new, yet sits naturally next to everything the brand already is.
The client gave me four keywords: Authentic, Foodie, Novel, and Home-grown.
I anchored the design in Authentic. Through every conversation with Bryn, what struck me most was a farmer's genuine devotion: pride in growing everything by hand in Britain, obsession with quality and freshness, and above all, a sincere wish for customers to receive his product exactly as intended.
That's why the back panel mattered as much as the front. This product exists so people can enjoy good mushrooms longer and more easily, so we refined the usage instructions through multiple rounds, hunting for the clearest layout and wording. The hand-drawn foodie illustrations may catch the eye first, but the real design goal was simpler: deliver a farmer's sincerity, with zero confusion, straight into the customer's hands.
About Project
Project Goal : The Mushroom Barn is a family run mushroom farm in the New Forest, UK, with a loyal local following. Popped Lion's Mane is their first dried product, so this was never a rebrand. The goal was to give the new product a presence of its own while keeping it unmistakably part of the brand those customers already trust.
Two things had to land at the same time. On the front, a counterintuitive product truth: this mushroom isn't dried to last longer, it's dried because it genuinely tastes better. On the back, clarity, so that someone buying dried Lion's Mane for the first time knows exactly what to do with it. The brief, in one line: deliver a farmer's sincerity straight into the customer's hands, with zero confusion.
Design Journey: Anchored in one of the client's four keywords, Authentic, the design translates a hand grown mushroom into a hand drawn one, capturing the cascading spines of Lion's Mane in bold ink strokes. The back panel was given as much care as the front, with usage instructions refined over several rounds so a first time buyer never has to guess.
