The Honey Collective is happy to announce the launch and successful market rollout of our new eco-conscious honey label!
The Honey Collective was established in 2019 and with a focus on small-batch honey production, we want to bring the goodness of honey to our customers in a unique, colourful way that resonates with who we are and what we do.
The primary purpose of our honey label is to communicate with our customers, but we also want it to be a space for creativity and authenticity, an opportunity to differentiate our brand from the rest…
Art Meets Design
To achieve this, we paid particular attention to our honey label design process and we decided to harness the talent and skill of Cape Town-based artist, Steven Erwin of Stencilworx.
While our first honey label design was basic but necessary to establish The Honey Collective in the honey market in South Africa, we soon realised that we needed to and wanted to elevate our honey label design above and beyond what was typically seen in the local market.
Our Cape honey bee, Apis Mellifera Capensis, is unique in the world of honeybees because they can reproduce via thelytokous parthenogenesis (reproduction of females without male fertilisation) and are only found in the Western Cape region of South Africa with the uniquely South African Fynbos Biome providing the main source of forage.
The Honey Collective has its roots in Cape Town, but we are now based on the Garden Route (Eden District) and our Cape Honeybee colonies have access to vast tracts of fynbos, wildflowers and Eucalyptus and Tsitsikamma forests.
Steve Erwin’s artistic skill came to the fore and using watercolour, he set out to paint the elements for our new label design. These elements include the Cape Honeybee, Fynbos plants (Protea and Leucospermum), wildflowers, beehives and mountain and forest scenes, all encapsulating the diverse habitats that our bees live and thrive in.
The next phase and challenge in the design process was the digitalisation of the artwork and finally the design execution and incorporation of the elements into the final label design.
Eco-Conscious Honey Label Comes to Life
The Honey Collective is an environmentally conscious brand and the decisions we make must reflect what we believe in. In a world riddled with plastic pollution, we decided to move away from plastic packaging and our honey is therefore only available in glass jars and now with more environmentally-friendly paper labels!
“Everywhere we go, plastic pollution proliferates. As nature lovers and protectors of bees, we believe that small, incremental positive changes can contribute towards meaningful change in the world. Making a simple and smarter packaging change is just another way that we can consciously and positively contribute to a healthier environment while simultaneously differentiating our honey in the market,” says Gero Lilleike, Co-Founder of The Honey Collective.
The design brief included a unique new label for each of our honey varieties available in our online shop, our new Eden Multifloral Honey and our flagship Tsitsikamma Fynbos Honey! In addition, each jar of Honey Collective honey also features a newly designed paper lid seal with useful harvesting information and contact details for consumers.
We’d like to know what you think of the design, so please feel free to let us know in the comments below or message us via our social media pages on Instagram and Facebook!
Support local beekeepers and enjoy real honey!
