Shure, Inc. of Niles, IL, has built a reputation in the audiophile world for high-performance microphones and audio electronics, including premium, professional-quality headphones. In January 2014, as the company readied a new line of budget-priced headphones for the retail market, it turned to design agency MiresBall to develop package graphics that would attract a new, and younger, audience to its established products.
The new line includes three models—the SRH144, SRH145, and SRH145m+—priced between $39 and $49 that feature a collapsible, portable design for listening on the go.
“Because the SRH144/145 was a new product line, at a new price point, and aimed at a new, younger audience generally unfamiliar with Shure, the brief was wide open,” says MiresBall Partner and Creative Director John Ball. “We knew we had to ‘reach out’ to this new consumer in a way we haven’t had to with the ‘core’ Shure customer, who knows and loves the brand. We also knew we wanted to communicate our commitment to great audio, something that other brands that emphasize style may lack.”
Targeting a millennial audience, MiresBall researched this demographic to understand their design consciousness and brand receptivity. The resulting striking yet minimalist packaging graphics—printed on a litho-laminated corrugated carton—use backgrounds of bright orange and green inspired by details in the products themselves. “By amplifying them to large solids, we increased shelf presence in a sea of black or white packages,” explains Ball.
Like the packaging for its professional-quality sister products, the new design includes close-up photography of the headphones to suggest the detailed sound quality they deliver. To emphasize the unique features of each headphone model, large display headlines—rendered with a tone-on-tone color treatment, in the primary Shure identity font of Trade Gothic—read, “Extended Range Audio” and “Rich Deep Bass.”
The new Shure line was launched in October 2014 in specialty retail channels globally, such as Guitar Center, InMotion Entertainment, and other airport-based consumer electronics stores as well as online. According to Ball, “Shure is very pleased with the new direction.”
