Sea Cruise & Melody

Agency: Gutsulyak.Studio
Art Director, Designer, Photographer: Yurko Gutsulyak
Illustrator, Photographer: Olga Protasova
Copywriter: Zoryana Gutsulyak
Project Type: Produced, Commercial Work
Client: Grona
Location: Toronto (Canada), Kyiv (Ukraine)
Packaging Contents: Snack Crackers
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Film

Grona company started a snack cracker series creating two types of dough as a basis for different flavors. We were commissioned to create the global concept of these products to present them as final goods on the market. The target market is pretty wide as to age and territory – with Ukraine as a core, it stretches from East with Arab Emirates and China to West with Western European countries and the United States. The creative concept should be understandable to consumers with different backgrounds and respectful towards different cultures. These are affordable but quality mass market products.

Among all draft topics like “space discovery”, “forest walk”, “board games”, etc two priority ones were chosen. Both depict leisure and fun familiar basically to all people – “sea adventure” for salty flavors and “disco party” for sweet flavors. Final naming was created after cracker design was approved – Sea Cruise and Melody. Sea Cruise is a low-fat and slightly salted cracker that at the moment includes three flavors: classic, onion and cheese. We recreated atmosphere of marine world in illustrations with accents on the floral elements to symbolize onion and on the evening sea to symbolize cheese. Melody is a sweet light cracker with low sugar. Now there are two types in this sub-line: classic and with poppy seeds. While creating illustrations, we were inspired by colors and patterns of music culture from the 70s.

What’s Unique?
Our challenge was to make this project inspiring and somehow innovative despite commonplace brief: too wide target audience; requirements literally to depict all cracker figures on packaging; working for mass market segment. In order to balance all compromises, we decided to use handcrafted modeling clay sculptures combined with real crackers for illustrations. According to our research, this technique was not ever used in food packaging design before, so we are proud to be pioneers. At the very beginning, the client was confused that modeling clay would be mixed with food and it could cause negative reaction. However, the final result surprised the most conservative audience in a good way.