Bold Bean has been a challenger favourite since it landed on shelves in 2021. The brand showed that tins and jars of beans could be glossy, foodie, and proudly premium, not just functional.
The company has experienced considerable positive momentum over the last few years; however, its visual identity has struggled to keep pace. Bold Bean had cult appeal, yet in the crowded canned and antipasti aisles, it lacked presence. White Bear was brought on to rethink its identity and help it grow from niche darling into a confident, mainstream contender without losing its grassroots charm.
Kelly Mackenzie, co-founder of White Bear, explains the early challenge: “On shelf, one, they were difficult to find because the amount of shelf presence that they had versus the competitors wasn’t that large.
“And two, once you actually identified where the brand was, which was quite hard because the logo was quite small, the challenge was that it was very difficult to tell between the SKU ranges.”
Colour clashes also made things difficult, with repeated reds, purples and oranges across different beans blurring distinctions. Organic jars weren’t immediately identifiable, and even the much-hyped Queen Bean – the bigger, rarer bean that justified a higher price – lacked obvious visual cues.
Simplified to amplify
White Bear’s answer was a mantra that guided the entire redesign: simplify to amplify.
“There was just so much clutter on the front of the pack that it made it very difficult for a consumer to go on that normal journey of looking at the pack top left to bottom right, seeing what’s the most important information that I need,” Kelly says. “So we stripped out everything that wasn’t absolutely essential… simplified to amplify became our mantra.”
This produced a cleaner, bolder hierarchy as well as a logo larger in scale, taking centre stage in solid black rather than its previous outline form. This switch not only improves legibility but also gives the brand a punchier, more assertive presence.
Information that was once scattered across the jar is now organised into a clear system, featuring a white border at the bottom that displays the SKU name in stark black type. Organic beans are unified under a green label, while a new gold ribbon signals the Queen Bean. Together, these moves provide shoppers with visual shortcuts that they can decode in seconds.
Retaining cult credibility
Scaling up doesn’t always sit easily with a brand rooted in grassroots energy. Bold Bean’s “bean champs” – its loyal fans – were fiercely attached to its quirks, and White Bear didn’t want to alienate them.
“Firstly, it was the logo. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel in any way. People loved the logo and loved the brand. So what we wanted to do was amplify it,” Kelly says. The solution was evolution, not revolution, which meant retaining the much-loved rich, foodie tones of the original packs, keeping SKU colours consistent for recognition, and amplifying rather than rewriting the brand mark.
The tension between credibility and scale also informed the textures and hand-drawn elements that appear throughout the system. Each bean now has its own illustrated pattern, bringing differentiation while staying true to Bold Bean’s imperfect, human personality.
Own the lid, own the shelf
One of the more playful decisions was to rethink the lid. Kelly explains: “When we were working on the project, we noticed that there’s a bit of a sea of sameness, firstly in the canned aisle, also in the antipasti aisle, where everything looks… quite staid, quite kind of heritage or legacy.
“We really wanted to shake that up and brighten it up by owning a colour,” Kelly explains.
That colour is yellow, drawn from Bold Bean’s existing palette but now splashed unapologetically across every lid. The agency describes it as a “ray of sunshine” cutting through the aisle, creating an instant navigation shortcut while cementing a brand asset that can stretch far beyond packaging.
From shelf to brand world
White Bear’s work extended beyond the jars themselves. The goal was to establish an identity that is flexible enough for cookbooks, social campaigns, retail displays, and more.
The new toolkit includes the imperfect gold ribbon, which Kelly describes as “a little bit wonky” by design. It can be deployed across everything from packaging to PowerPoint slides, maintaining consistency while giving Bold Bean its own distinctive signal.
Other assets include playful illustrations in a charcoal-and-pen style, reminiscent of the doodles found in the margins of cookbooks. They inject personality and remind consumers of the brand’s grassroots energy. The bean patterns, meanwhile, offer a modular visual language that can be expanded across multiple touchpoints.
“All of this was about creating a brand-first system,” Kelly says. “We wanted to make sure in this fractured world where brands operate on so many different channels… that the brand is consistent, cohesive and familiar at every touch point.”
Reception and what’s next
It’s early days for the redesign, and the new packs are yet to roll out fully in retail. For now, social media has become the testing ground, and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
That reaction suggests White Bear has managed a delicate balancing act of stripping back noise while preserving the quirks that fans loved. The result is an identity that feels louder, prouder and easier to shop, without losing the flavour of the brand’s early days.
In Kelly’s words, “Let’s only use what is essential, in order to really make a fundamental difference to how people can shop the range.”
Bold Bean now has the toolkit to move beyond cult status, bringing beans into the mainstream in a way that still feels personal, imperfect and true to the name.
