Höganäs Chocolate

Design: makebardo
Location: New Zealand
Project Type: Produced
Client: Höganäs Chocolate
Product Launch Location: Sweden
Packaging Contents: Chocolate
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Cardboard

Höganäs Chocolate is committed to developing a unique fermentation process to achieve the highest quality chocolate and ensure a fair working condition for both people and cacao trees to thrive. All their products are UTZ & Rainforest Alliance Certified. On the other hand, it is a company that can be 100% traced to their single plantation in Ecuador. The brand’s motto is “Grown in Ecuador, crafted in Sweden.” Two communities link together by the love for chocolate. Their Ecuadorian beans are shipped like a love letter across the Atlantic, where they are turned into divine chocolate.

Throughout the brand identity, we seek to highlight that bond between Ecuador and Sweden. A hint of pride and nostalgia for a bygone era when Gustavo’s family (Co-Founder of Höganäs Chocolate) travelled from Europe to Latin America, the proud of that achievement and now the inverse journey to Höganäs. That link, those trips, that family history of migrants is what we narrate in the visual identity. To represent that connection, we resort to the mailing world. Receiving a postcard is a symbol of love, of affection. When someone sends a postcard, it is an excellent way to be closer to the other. The concept is to connect people and places through a tangible element. When we immerse in the postcards world, we immediately arrive at the postage stamps, which indicate the mailing’s origin. These small pieces of paper fascinated us because it is non-traditional communication. It is a universal symbol and is related to philately, which has to do with collecting. When you collect something, that means that it has value. For all those reasons, we decide to work with the “mail aesthetic” for the brand identity.

A mandatory demand of our client’s brief was to work the whole design based on the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci Numbers, so we created the design following those parameters. The brand’s primary colour responds to the classic colour of Höganäs ceramic pottery and the colour of the chocolate, which is a deep brown. Regarding the wordmark, we craft a forceful bespoke typeface.

The result is clear and cohesive. The brand identity has the nostalgia of the past and the strength of the present.