Poland Spring Water

The Poland Spring water bottle label is a very complex example of display typography. There is so much going on in this design that it is hard to keep the eye focused on the brand. The majority of the design is green leaves with dark details. The middle of the illustration is a river of rushing water that creates motion and eventually shows the horizon line differentiating the focus from the background. Once the consumer looks closer at the design they notice that there is a mountain in the very background under the brand name and the river and in-between the dark green trees. There is also a curved bar that is in the middle of the image. The illustration alone is hard enough to look at, but then there is the typography. The brand type stands out in white and contains the same green as the trees in its stroke to create consistency; that being said, the type has many issues. The upper-case letters in the type are oddly shaped and even appear pointy and hard to associate with water. The only way I would describe this upper-case type while talking to another designer is that it is a serif font that has serifs on its serifs. Another thing is that the lower-case "g" looks like someone cut off the ascender from a letter "d" and added a curly tail to the bottom. In the side box is a red on yellow paragraph of left justified type. First of all they red on yellow type does stand out, but it vibrates too much and hurts to really look at. The headline for the side box is center justified, while the body copy is left justified. This justification issue throws off the consistency for this area of the design. Lastly the distribution facts are bunched in a slim box that looks like it was thrown in at the last minute. While this design might have a eye-catching white title, which is a plus for display typography, it lacks many common typographical elements that could make this much more appealing to the consumer.