Who: Adam Feller (He/Him)
Role: Owner/Creative Director
Where: Des Moines, IA
Connect: https://aviditycreative.com/ • @aviditycreative • Roastar Profile: https://www.roastar.com/designers/adam-feller
What they order: I rarely drink coffee. My wife is the coffee drinker in our house and she reaps all the benefits of the clients we work with.
R!WC: Adam, thanks for chatting with us at Roast! West Coast. I'm excited to learn more about your design work, but first, I'd like to ask about you! Who are you?
Adam: I'm a bit of a chameleon. I like a lot of different things, and I can adapt to my surroundings pretty well. I'm like most designers in that I love Apple products, I love vintage things, I don't like being contained to one style, and I like a variety of music styles. However, I'm also a huge sports guy (big Iowa Hawkeye fan), and I'm comfortable in a formal business meeting. I love being funny and making my kids and wife laugh. I like the sales side of a design company as well as the creative side. I'm realizing lately that project management is not my thing, though.
R!WC: How long have you been working in design, and how did you get started specifically in packaging design?
Adam: I graduated college in 2011 and have been designing professionally since then. My senior year of college when my graphic design professor asked what I wanted to ultimately do with my career. I told her I'd be satisfied if every day I could be designing logos and packaging. It took getting experience in a few jobs after college before I ended up starting my company, Avidity Creative, and now I do exactly what I wanted in college.
My first packaging project came as a freelance gig with Ross Street Roasting. The client was local to me, and I had met him at a coffee festival in our town. I pitched a branding project to him for far less than I probably should have, and he accepted. To this day, that client has taught me the most about coffee and the industry than any other, which I suppose makes sense. Since then, my company has worked with over sixty coffee brands, and we know the FDA guidelines almost as much as my own social security number.
R!WC: How are food and beverage branding different from other types of retail design/branding?
Adam: Our approach to branding would be the same for any client, likely, no matter what industry they were in. However, what makes food and beverage different from other industries is that there is a physical product, the business is always Business-to-Consumer, and there's a higher value in the service we provide.
What we love about this industry is the large variety of styles and clients. While our approach to each client is similar, the target audience is always different, even with coffee. Not many industries have this much variety, and it seems the business owners of retail food and beverage are very helpful to each other because they don't view each other as competitors, likely because the competition is usually the larger brand in their category.
R!WC: What makes for a good designer/client relationship?
Adam: I think, above all, trust and respect for each other. A client who values our work and understands the expertise we bring outside of just being good designers makes for better work in the end. And from the designer side, we should set expectations with the client and meet those expectations on time.
Some more detailed things we expect from good clients are timely responses and providing the content we need.
R!WC: What is your strategy or philosophy when brainstorming the design concept for a new package? What are the challenges? What is the fun part?
Adam: Our philosophy is always to keep the customer in mind. We really try to understand as much as we can about our client's products and their competitors, but we focus a lot on the people we're trying to appeal to.
The challenge of the process is always getting the client to think deeper about their customers. Most clients think about themselves and only what they think looks good. We want them to be in their customer's shoes and think about what might catch their eye. In coffee, this is especially difficult because there are so many coffee brands and a lot of them are the same, and the product is quite literally the same.
The most fun we have on a branding or packaging project is getting to hear right from the client what they're passionate about. Hearing what inspired them to start the business or what their vision is for the company usually inspires us. Next, it's also always cool to see the hard work you put in turn into something physical and see it on the shelf when you're out and about.
R!WC: What makes for a good coffee package design? Why do some packages stand out on the shelf?
Adam: This is a tricky question. Because there are so many coffee brands and coffee is basically a commodity, the branding is really what sets you apart. So what makes a package design good is speculative and varies depending on the customer's frame of reference.
In general, I would say what makes a package good or what makes it stand out is to have a singular concise visual message. We rarely use photographic imagery on coffee packaging, and we never have images of actual coffee beans, cups, or anything else because coffee bags are already so recognizable as coffee.
Bright colors usually stand out, but if everyone is using bright colors, then the opposite is true. So I suppose what I mean is look at what packages your bags are near and do something different. That goes with shape and size as well. The coffee I see in boxes and tubes, and jars stands out well because everyone else uses bags.
R!WC: What does the name—Avidity Creative—mean or stand for?
Adam: Avidity is a name I came up with right after graduating college when I thought my only job opportunity might be working for myself. Luckily it became a side gig quickly. The word "Avidity" is a synonym for eagerness and passion and a few other words. I've always considered it a good word to describe me as a person, so it seemed like a good option for my business name.
R!WC: What is something that you've learned about running your business that has surprised you or you've had to learn the hard way?
Adam: There's a lot that I've had to learn. As a designer, I had to learn to curb my ego and accept criticism. Clients typically aren't visual experts, but they're the ones paying for your services. This goes in hand with another thing I've learned, and that is how to think like the client and truly understand how we can [create] great work that actually fits the strategy.
Something I think all successful designers have to learn is pricing. As a professional designer, I will never win a client who is considering using Fiverr or now artificial intelligence, so we no longer compete on price at all.
R!WC: You're located in Des Moines, IA. How does being located in the Midwest influence your career and company?
Adam: Being in the Midwest surely has influenced my personal career and my business. There's good and bad to be found in any location you live in, I'm sure. In the Midwest, we don't have easy access to as much fine art or media culture or fancy design schools. However, a strong work ethic is engrained in us, and I credit my upbringing for my ambition. In terms of my business, it's been less of a negative impact since the pandemic and the rise of video meetings. Nearly all of my clients are from somewhere other than central Iowa. Perhaps because the cost of living is a little lower, my clients from the coast think that means our prices are cheaper. They're not, but it's surely an ok reason for them to start a conversation with me.
R!WC: What questions should a client ask of a potential designer/design firm?
Adam: A client should ask a potential design partner questions like, "Have you worked with a business like mine before?" "What is your process like?" "What is the expected timeline for a project like mine" "How might some of your previous clients describe their experience with your design firm?"
These are all questions outside of your typical "How much?" question. We obviously get that a lot, but if it's the first question a client asks, then it's usually a red flag for us because it usually means the client doesn't truly value our expertise. The question should instead be, "What is the typical result of working with you?" because if we can deliver the result they desire, then it's worth more of their investment.
R!WC: What is your dream design job, and why?
Adam: This is tough because, as I mentioned in an anecdote above, I'm working the job I have always wanted since college.
Instead, if I could think of a dream client and project, it would be to design an entire rebrand for an established but not gigantic food or beverage brand. Something–maybe–local to me or that has a personal connection. A good example might be Palmer Candy in Sioux City, Iowa which is Midwest famous for its Twin Bing candy bar. If you're not familiar, it's two little balls of cherry nougat covered in chocolate and mashed peanuts.
R!WC: You also host The Food Business Podcast. What made you want to start your own pod, and what is the show about?
Adam: I actually haven't podcasted for a while since we started getting busy. It's been on my to-do list to get back to it for a long time.
I started the podcast as a way to start getting traction and share some of our expertise in the industry. It actually started as a podcast for restaurant owners, and then when we decided to focus more on retail food and beverage, we changed direction.
So now the podcast is mostly myself and a guest, each episode covering a variety of topics around how to grow your CPG food and beverage brand and how to get into stores. Naturally, we talk a lot about design, branding, and packaging, but most of the episodes center around my guest's experience growing their brands or what the process is like when approaching retailers to sell your products.
I plan to get back to this format soon and share all that we've continued to learn about the industry and what things we've noticed have worked for our clients.
R!WC: Is there anything else we didn't cover that listeners should know about you and Avidity Creative?
Adam: I think you've covered just about everything. Both myself and now my company are passionate about design and the industry we focus on. There's not much that is more exciting to us than wrapping up a project, seeing it in person on the shelf, and hearing feedback from clients about their products selling like crazy.
Thanks for doing this interview and allowing me to share my story. Hopefully, readers will have some takeaways to use in their own careers.
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