Lewis Moberly adds crystal class

Lewis Moberly has revamped Edinburgh Crystal’s corporate identity and packaging, as the 140-year-old company targets younger, more contemporary customers.

The London brand consultancy beat Roundel, Lippa Pearce and Michael Nash Associates to the project, which is worth a £25 000 fee, following a credentials pitch in November.

‘For the past five or six years, the market has modernised at quite a pace in the crystal industry, and consumers’ tastes have changed massively,’ according to Edinburgh Crystal marketing manager Carla Muncaster.

She cites increasingly informal dining habits and a more fashion-conscious attitude to tableware as key motives for the redesign. This trend has given rise to the designs of John Rocha for Waterford Crystal and Jasper Conran at Stuart Crystal, she points out.

The Edinburgh Crystal work also appears in the same week that fashion designer Julien MacDonald’s crystalware designs are unveiled by Royal Doulton.

‘There are so many different things. People aren’t getting married, or are getting married later, so that side of the business [wedding gift-giving] has declined. We had to modernise and compete with what’s out there,’ Muncaster adds.

Lewis Moberly was tasked with creating a ‘cohesive look’ and a visual means of differentiating Edinbugh Crystal’s three sub-brands: the traditional Connoisseur range; mass-market Lifestyle line; and fashion-led Designer collection, which replaces The Edge.

The new-look identity adapts the brand’s ‘heraldic lion’ logo, says Muncaster. The packaging concept, inspired by the methods by which crystal is made, boasts abstract images of earth, fire and water.

The colourways are lavender for the Lifestyle and Designer collections and dark purple for the Connoisseur range.

Edinburgh Crystal’s Designer collection is created by in-house designer Jessamy Kelly and independent crystal designers Daniel Whittard, Nicola Schlanger and Joanne Mitchell.