Target’s colorful Up&Up rebrand aims for more shelf appeal

The branding and packaging for Target’s beloved Up&Up brand is now more colorful than ever.

Over the course of three years, design agency Collins reimagined the wide-ranging private-label brand, which has more than 2,000 products spanning aluminum foil and copy paper to pet grooming products and a wrist blood pressure monitor. The Up&Up brand does nearly $3 billion in annual sales for Target. The retailer wanted to relaunch it with reformulated products, reduced plastic usage, and hundreds of new items, which began rolling out in stores last year and will continue through early 2025.

New private-label packaging elevates bargain shopping

This comes at a time when competitors like Walmart and CVS have invested in relaunching their own private-label brands to appeal to premium shoppers who traded down to beat rising prices. The packaging overhauls had a similar approach. They’re personality-driven and expressive, using color-on-color type or flat graphics that might be familiar to those who shop pricier direct-to-consumer brands. Together, they offer a new design-forward look to generic brands. But Target has long been a category leader, and the retailer sees its more than 45 private labels as key to clawing back market share from competitors.

Target’s previous Up&Up packaging used matching colors for the typography and arrow logo against a white background. The new packaging dials up the color use. Collins says that during two months of face-to-face research with Target customers, one said, “My life is filled with color, why shouldn’t my products be the same?” That resonated with the design team and gave them permission to be more colorful.

More color and an improved experience

This time around, the team designed the packaging for better clarity, with vivid color blocking, a larger logo, and type that’s easier to read, whether on store shelves or while scrolling on a smartphone to shop online. “It’s a lot of work, right?” the design firm’s founder, Brian Collins, says. “But it’s not a complicated thing. The system is incredibly simple.”

The agency also worked with occupational therapists to improve the utility and ergonomics of Up&Up’s product packaging “so you don’t have to feel like you’re cracking a safe to open up” items like a household cleaner or toothpaste, Collins says. The overhaul includes product design improvements throughout the Up&Up line. The team redesigned toothbrushes to last longer, and made the walls of food storage containers thicker so that they’re more durable, Target says.

The key to designing a line with such varied items is to understand what consumers are looking for with each product category and reflect that, according to Collins. “You have to know when to be charming, whimsical, serious, funny, purposeful, lighthearted . . . and you have to learn that each of these categories has a certain personality,” he says.

“I remember the caliber of the private-label brands that I grew up with in terms of their quality,” Collins continues, noting that they were bland, and “the packaging design was just terrible.”

Target’s approach is all about quality. The goal for Up&Up is similar to that of other private labels: to make a bargain brand feel more valuable by elevating its packaging. “There’s a sense of optimism about this brand,” Collins says. “There’s a sense of joyfulness about it. I think it feels fun.”

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