McDonald’s has given itself a global packaging revamp, its first in three years. The design elements of the new cups, boxes and bags are pared right down and feature bright bold lettering and an updated version of Macca’s Golden Arches.

The new simple designs are a radical change from the 2013 packaging:

Matt Biespiel, McDonald’s senior director-global brand development, calls it McDonald’s new “DynamicDesign”.

The design overhaul was triggered by sales declines in the second half of 2014. Early in 2015, McDonald’s took one designer from each of its seven lead agencies to London for a week-long brainstorming session.

The designers came from:

• Leo Burnett Germany
  TBWA US
  DDB Hong Kong
  Creata Australia
  Boxer UK
  Landini Australia
  Forpeople UK.

Their brief was to come up with packaging designs that would be true, bold and simple and work with McDonald’s updated designs in its restaurants and other areas like digital.

Ideas were shown to consumer groups mid-week, and were then finessed. By the end of the week, there were three finalists.

Then McDonald’s long-time packaging agency, Boxer Brand Design, worked on perfecting the winning design. The slogan, I’m lovin’ it, has been retained.

The new look has launched in the US before it extends throughout the world, The designs feature the colours – bright pink, acid green, neon orange, majestic purple and sky blue, as well as McDonald’s signature red and yellow.

The exercise showed McDonald’s “how much our consumers wanted McDonald’s to be McDonald’s,” Biespiel noted. “They really liked the designs that leaned into our core assets and icons.

“The entire portfolio of new graphics are a celebration of what makes McDonald’s ‘McDonald’s’ for customers. I’m hoping that our customers will see this as being true to who we are, being bold, and, to an extent, being fashionable. The bag and the cup act as mini billboards as people walk out of our restaurants, walk on the subways, walk down the streets, so we very intentionally designed these with a fashion mentality.”

The new packaging coincides with the 25th anniversary of McDonald’s doing away with styrofoam clamshell containers.

The company is still working towards having all of its fibre-based packaging come from recycled or certified sustainable sources by 2020. By the end of 2014, it had achieved about 27% recycled or certified sustainably sourced fibre-based in the US. The brand will continue to use brown paper, which includes post-consumer recycled content.