Sauces, oils, seasonings and condiments are consistently thriving categories in direct-to-consumer packaged goods. These high-margin, shelf-stable products can be easily differentiated with unique flavours and ingredients, and have high branding potential that can quickly adapt to trends. Right now, hot sauce its having its moment, with celebrities from Ed Sheeran to Brooklyn Beckham jumping on the band wagon, following trailblazers such as Smoke and Tears, Stuzzi, The General Hot Sauce, Queen Majesty and Cutino.

In this context, Yellowbird is a Texas-based hot-sauce brand, first circulated at farmers markets before gaining nationwide distribution. As sales accelerated, however, the product’s branding and packaging failed to keep up. Enter Gander, the trendy Brooklyn-based studio responsible for the highly-grammable packaging for pantry staples including Graza olive oil, Magic Spoon cereal and chickpea-pasta mainstay Banza.

Gander believes that ‘a brand is the promise of an experience that transcends print, packaging, advertising and the internet’ and is noted for its bold, type-led, often whimsical, always slick, design work. The studio brought these same principles to Yellowbird’s strategy, identity and branding, packaging, positioning, art direction, web design, and web development.

What stood out for Gander wasn’t just the products’ straightforward ingredients (for example its Classic Habanero variety lists simply carrots, onions, peppers, vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt), but that unlike the majority of boutique competitors who often court extreme heat levels, Yellowbird celebrates a milder, more flavourful experience, making it ideal for ‘everyday use’.

Taking their lead from these USPs, ‘simplify to amplify’ might aptly summarise Gander’s approach. Before the redesign, for example, Yellowbird’s colour palette and art style had a distinct 90s flair, with a combination of bold hues and gradients that would look at home on the shelves of a health-food store. Instead, Gander has introduced a single warm, saturated yellow across all labels. Each variant is then given a smaller sub-label in a different colour, a bit like a car number plate: Blue Agave Sriracha is hot pink; Strawberry Ginger is strawberry red; Plum Reaper is Purple. Spiciness levels are indicated both via verbal descriptors (e.g. ‘Kinda Hot’) and little flames on a scale of five total flames.

The titular bird icon has also been overhauled. Once fluffy and groomed, looking cutesy and rather placid, the character is now spunky and sassy, with a spiky feather pattern to rival Lisa Simpson’s starfish hairstyle. On Yellowbird’s website, the bird’s eyes follow your cursor. We also find him roasting some peppers over an open fire (in the website footer), wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses, taking a nap on top of an outsized pepper, and tending to the pepper garden from a white picket fence (bird)house.

These activities help to take the yellow bird from logo to mascot, transforming Yellowbird from product to brand. As well as hot sauce, consumers can now buy a full range of merch from t-shirts and mugs to pool floats, for the full lifestyle experience. Heavily investing in the development of the brand’s internal character significantly raises its lore and contributes to in-universe worldbuilding. In an era when a brand’s ‘why’ almost trumps its ‘what’, differentiation does, indeed, come with the creation of characters and the fictional universe they move in.