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Pleasant Hearth, Fire Pit Brand Refresh & Packaging Concept
Pleasant Hearth is a GHP Group brand that sells fireplace glass doors, electric fireplaces, wood-burning stoves, fire pits and other hearth products. Its brand identity had grown outdated and struggled to stand out on retail shelves.
I was asked to pitch a brand revamp with a fresh, modern and youthful take, with the goal of making Pleasant Hearth more appealing to design-conscious retailers such as Target. For the first phase of the redesign, I focused on the fire pit category.
Year
2020
Role
Brand Designer
Packaging Designer
Scope
Brand Redesign
Packaging Design
Brand Redesign
Redefining the Legacy
The new identity modernized Pleasant Hearth's look while keeping enough of its heritage to stay recognizable. The logo, color palette and typography were built to feel warm, youthful and approachable, the way an evening by the fire should.
Logo
The redesign kept some foundational features of the original logo so the brand wouldn't break entirely from its past. I stayed with a cursive script but chose a cleaner, more playful and more legible typeface. I also replaced the literal hearth illustration with an abstract mark that integrates more closely with the wordmark.
Color
Type
Graphic Elements
Packaging
Creating Impact
Shortly before starting this project, I had bought a fire pit of my own. Drawing on my own experience, from purchase through assembly and use, I pinpointed the details that would have actually influenced my buying decision.
Outside the Box
The original packaging was overcrowded and lacked hierarchy, so I took a minimal approach that puts the fire pit front and center. Callouts that could be inferred from the photo, like the spark-control mesh cover, took a back seat to information that actually affects a purchase.
One panel is dedicated to assembly, which appeared in the manual but not on the box. My own fire pit took two hours to put together, and knowing that upfront would have changed my decision. Showing the time and steps sets honest expectations before the box is even opened.
Inside the Box
In the original packaging, every component was wrapped in plastic. For the redesign, I proposed paper instead. It's the more sustainable choice, and it's also a key ingredient in starting a fire.
Crumpled paper goes beneath the kindling and logs as tinder, so the packing paper could serve two purposes:
Protecting the individual components
Providing tinder for the customer's first fire
The packaging stops being something to throw away and becomes the first step toward using the product.
Kindling a Fresh Start
This first phase gave Pleasant Hearth a modern identity and a packaging approach built to stand out on the shelves of design-conscious retailers. Starting with fire pits created a foundation the brand could carry into its other product categories.
The biggest lesson came from my own fire pit. Walking through my experience as a customer, from purchase to assembly to the first fire, showed me what actually mattered on the box and what didn't. Good packaging should do more than sell the product: it should prepare the customer for owning it.