Grown Up Chocolate Company Identity: First Meeting

Collaborative Practice

YCN – Grown Up Chocolate Company

Brief

Brief Overview:

Create and Design a new identity for The Grown Up Chocolate Company's new range of free from healthy chocolate bars. 

Deliverables:

- Name for the Range

- Packaging, Create artwork that shows how new identity will look on packs. 

- A landing page

- Key visuals, Icons for dairy free,  nut free and vegan.

- Make up chocolate bar names

Mandatory Requirements:

Must include Logo, space for barcode and room for nutritional information on packaging designs. 

Must get the balance right between promoting it as a healthy snack, whilst also keeping the brand's deliciously decadent, handmade image. 

Target Audience:

Existing customers, Health conscious adults, middle aged women and younger women.

Keywords: 

- New

- Innovative

- Handmade

- Indulgent

- Decadent

- Reminiscent

- Nostalgic

- Tempting

- Beautiful

- Balance

- Delicious

- Health Benefits

- Distinct

- Unique

- Exciting

- Stand out

Brand

·       Chocolate bars for adults, using reminiscent flavours of their childhood.

·       Not for children.

·       Children not allowed.

·       Nostalgia of childhood.

What the Brand Represents

The idea behind our Grown Up Chocolate bars is that they are reminiscent of the bars we ate as children, but reimagined for Grown Ups only.

Existing Website/Design/Packaging

Pink/orange and browns, neutral tones with contrasting colours.

Purple, red, blue, yellow

Browns - taken literally from the chocolate.

Uses black and white photography of children dressed in work clothes.

Handwritten font alongside strong sans serif font which uses capital letters.

Simple layout, lots of white space.

Black icons simple

Grey/black type and ornamentation

Environmental Policy

Charging fair prices.

Minimising impact on environment. *Maybe sustainable/recycled packaging.

Natural resources.

Protecting the environment. *Animals/landscapes/outdoors.

Reducing effects of climate change *global design, suppliers from around the world.

*woodland creatures from around the world.

Give to charity and food banks.

Location

They are based in Harlow, Essex.

Nature reserves

Birthplace of fibre optic technology

Sculpture town *Sculptures of chocolate, children, woodland creatures, nuts etc.

Marshes and meadows.

Playgrounds - Children, nostalgia.

Swings, roundabouts, slides.

Outdoor gyms.

Target Audience

Women

Chocolate is hands down the number one food women crave.

- A Crave-Inducing Combination
The ingredients in chocolate create a powerful blend. "The combination gives you that overall optimum brain happiness," Dr. Mitchell says. 

Theobromine: A caffeine-like stimulant that perks you up.

Tryptophane: Increases the brain's serotonin levels for a happy, feel-good result.

Phenethylamine: Releases endorphins, causing feelings of passion and love.

Sugar and fat: The unbeatable duo that gives chocolate its delectable creamy texture.

The Health Benefits

Cacao contains flavonoids, the antioxidant found in chocolate and red wine. Emerging research claims that flavonoids in dark chocolate can increase blood flow, which could help reduce high blood pressure. "As a general rule, the higher percentage of cacao equals a higher percentage of flavonoids," Dr. Mitchell says.

So here’s a controversial thought: rather than try to anticipate what all women might want, how about we try to create good design that will appeal to both genders? The Della experience should, if nothing else, teach us that women neither need nor want a bespoke website. We could look instead to brands like Apple, which create female-friendly products (and sites and apps) and conclude that maybe good design simply appeals to men and women alike.

Did you know a woman dedicates only 2.6 seconds to her product selection? Branding designed for women needs a feminine appeal, since women’s focus strategies vary significantly from men’s. While men tend to be single-minded and focused on a task, women multi-taskand are more attentive to details.


Color and image

Packaging design for women goes far beyond making the product a shade of pink.  Surprisingly, pink is low on the spectrum of packaging color preferences. Women like blue the best, with red a close second, according to Packaging Digest. Surveys show that pictures of celebrities on a package do not particularly attract female buyers.

Shape

Women prefer packaging with an appealing shape, visual characteristics, functionality, and an easiness in handling, storage, opening and closing. Functionality and ease of use make a product female-friendly. A visually-appealing shape is desirable, but how a product opens and closes or the level of control of the dispenser is also a key factor in preference.

Text

Keep it simple: remove 50 percent of the words from your marketing message and transpose the rest to a visual. Women love to talk, so let them do the talking, not your package! All lettering on a package should be large and easy to read. In essence, it should scream the benefits of the product inside.  Keep away from technical driven statements on the benefits. A woman doesn’t really care how the product works as long as it works effectively and continuously.


Health Motivated People

A ‘healthy’ package appearance can inspire a ‘healthy’ product experience.
The effect of package appearance on taste evaluation is highly context-dependent.
Packaging appearance has little impact on taste evaluation in ‘green’ supermarkets.
Shoppers at green supermarkets are less easily persuaded by packaging design.
Highlights, Colors and typefaces differ in weight perception.

‘Light’ and ‘heavy’ typeface and color function as a product’s healthiness cue. The effect of typeface weight is dependent on a consumer’s health regulatory focus. Individuals aiming at good health are susceptible to subtle health indicators. Explicit effects were corroborated using an implicit measure (IAT)

Nostalgia and Creativity

Research has found that nostalgia can heighten creativity. 

Nostalgia makes us crave the past. It is a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former time or place, whether it’s for a living memory or experience, for another country, for family and friends, or for era that is perceived as being a simpler time.

Used in design, nostalgia can appeal to the audience on a sentimental and emotive level. No matter how much technology advances and the modern world progresses, nostalgia—the notion of longing—remains an essential human condition. Here’s how to harness the psychological and emotive power of nostalgia in your design.

Reinvent childhood memories, Bring back the days of summer, Flashback to simpler times, Celebrate the holidays, Contrast then and now, Create a feel good character, create a look that feels local, dig out historic photographs, Mix vintage fonts, colour it sepia, highight heritage, mid century colour palette, keep it simple, use retro style, make it familar, go old school, merge two disparate ideas. 

As nostalgia evokes a warm and fuzzy feeling it can be used as a sentimental appeal to your audience. Identify how your brand can connect to an aspect of the past and reinterpret your memories or the collective imagination in an abstract way. However, be sure to know your target audience because different generations have different associations and experiences, and to use it in appropriate situations for best effect.

Adjectives

- New

- Innovative

- Handmade

- Indulgent

- Decadent

- Reminiscent

- Nostalgic

- Tempting

- Beautiful

- Balance

- Delicious

- Health Benefits

- Distinct

- Unique

- Exciting

- Stand out

Initial Ideas

• Ingredients
• Natural colours
• Nature
• Righteous
• Green 
• Handmade
• Use handmade techniques such as print: Screen printing, Mono printing
• Use Illustration
• Include sky, grass aspects of the outdoors.
• Different types of trees nuts, where they grow.
• Packaging has a tree with see through leaves showing glimpses of the bars.
• Woodland creatures
• Woodland creatures, the bars themselves fill in their fur/body using see through plastic. (Similar to the pasta packaging).
• Woodland creatures using gym equipment.
• Best of both world's healthy and indulgent.
• Play on the idea of contrast of two different things 
• Look at history of cocoa beans
• Health benefits of chocolate
• Play on their idea of kid's not allowed, kid's dressed up in gym clothes.
• Kid's drawings of woodland creatures.
• Pure
• Eco friendly, use natural paper/packaging
• Use eco friendly methods of creating the artwork, use recyclable materials,
• Look into eco friendly printing processes.
• Purple/gold/silver, luxurious/indulgent colours.
• Illustrated gym equipment/clothes 
• The packaging looks like a gym bag, then the plastic is see through showing the bar so it looks like the bar is in the bag.
• Guilt free
• Eat the bar instead of going to the gym
• Health benefits of ingredients, nuts etc.
• Use positive colours.
• Look at graze boxes for inspiration.
• Images of fruit and vegetables in place/ to contrast against chocolate.
• Vegetables/fruit/nuts illustrated in gold/silver showing nutritious value and indulgence. 
• Play on the nostalgia aspect
• Illustrate old playground/outdoor games that used to played by children e.g hopscotch, skipping ropes. 
• Names for brand, Original, Raw, Hearty, Virtuous, essence, valuable, native, fresh, healthful. 
• Landing Page, the chocolate bars playing these childhood games.
• Key Visuals, using illustrations, stamps in the shape of the animals associated with each message, e.g cow, squirrel. 
• recyclable packaging
• Looking into environment and sustainability
• If you eat this bar you are making yourself and the environment healthier.
• idea that these bars are healthy and too indulgent and healthy for children.
• Wouldn't have touched these bars as kids.
• Too healthy for children.
• Children are usually fussy.
• Go back in time to your youthful and energetic self. 
• Tastes great and it's healthy.
• Rewarding

Main Ideas

·      Nostalgia from adults childhood, involving those activities outside in nature, which communicates the natural, healthy aspect of the bars. E.g, buttercup, dandelion clocks, rolling down grass hills, daisy chains.

·      Woodland animals, immature/ showing the outside, bringing them back to their childhood.

·      Health benefits/science of chocolate, using chemical elements, illustrations in a fun/ childish form.

Next Steps – If Possible

·      Please could you let me know if you have any other ideas from reading the brief as to what could be on the packaging/ concept.

·      How best to represent a healthy chocolate bar, whilst also making it look tasty and indulgent.

·      I’m open to your ideas or your comments on my initial ideas and what we spoke about yesterday.

·      Probably a range of about 5 bars.

·      Any ideas for a name for the range or names for each of the bars.

·      Illustrations for the bars.

·      3 icons to show nut free, dairy free and vegan.

·      A landing page, probably could use the same illustrations that are on the bars.

·      If possible please could we meet at a time convenient to you to fill in the collaborative contract forms and plan what we are each going to do next.