The butterfly brand

Image by: Maarten Jurriaanse

When Wally Olins was speaking in a neighboring town, pingpong’s founders, or Maarten Jurriaanse and Barry de Bruin, rushed there to hear him and invite him out for beers.

Wally looked at their portfolio, and promised to keep them in mind for upcoming assignments. A few months later he called to ask them if they were interested in making a brand image for a new natural medicines company called Sprunk-Jansen. “We were honoured to work for Wally. This was our chance to really show what we’re good at,” says Maarten.

“When we design something, we start by boiling everything down until we have what’s really important. When we have the story or key words that really encapsulate what the company is about, we brief the designers” says Maarten. They told the story or Erik Sprunk-Jansen who’s travelling the world to find new products, like a modern Dr. Livingstone, and used words like “exotic”, “natural” and “handpicked”. “We all met in the morning and talked about the project, and then we met again in the afternoon to discuss and develop each other’s ideas. Actually, the conversation is one of our most important tools.”

They knew that they needed to find a really strong shape. While Maarten was combining “balance” and “natural” into kaleidoscope-like landscapes, another Maarten had translated “natural” and “exploring” into beautiful sketches of moths and beetles. When they brought these images to the afternoon session, someone placed the kaleidoscope landscapes into the wings of the moth. “I loved the idea, because the wings became windows,” says Maarten. “The moths were beautiful, but Sprunk-Jansen doesn’t just take something from nature. They combine nature with modern science, and we had to visualize that somehow.” They simplified the moth and let it become a butterfly.

“This is something that we can use alongside medicines. It’s something that we can use to treat ourselves,” says Maarten. “The butterfly world is not black or white, it’s in balance. The whiteness tells a story of medicine and authority, while the shapes, images and colours tell stories of exploration and nature.”The names of the products are straight forward and simple, while the images are never ending and complex. Education and exploration. “We don’t like the “do as your doctor tells you, “says Maarten. “We’d like to be educated and inspired to trust and treat ourselves.”