CASAHANA Savory Cookies

Designer: Ho Hei Yi
Location: Malaysia
Project Type: Student Project
Course: Graphic Design

Description

The packaging concept is inspired by Penang’s iconic street mural culture, particularly murals featuring bicycles and everyday local life. These murals are well-known for their playful, interactive nature and strong connection to Penang’s identity.

In this design, the bicycle represents a journey through flavors. While the ingredients, such as prawn, crab, satay, and fish head, are illustrated as characters riding bicycles like humans. This transforms each flavor into a visual story, allowing the packaging to feel lively, friendly, and culturally rich rather than static or traditional.

Brief and Design Solution

This project is a packaging design for Casahana, a Malaysian brand introducing a new range of savory snack cookies. The series features four bold local flavors: Cereal Prawn, Chilli Crab, Satay, and Curry Fish Head Cookies. The product is positioned as a modern, cultural snack that appeals to both locals and tourists, especially as a souvenir-style item found in airports and popular tourist locations.

The design uses vector illustration, bold gradients, and high-contrast Pantone colors to create a strong shelf impact. Flavor ingredient vectors are blended with cookie visuals to hint at the taste inside, creating curiosity and encouraging exploration. Chinese typography is treated as a main visual element rather than a secondary detail, while layered textures and graphic compositions echo the feeling of street murals painted on urban walls.

The uniqueness of this packaging lies in its fusion of street art, food culture, and typography. Bold Chinese characters are used not only on the packaging but also embossed directly onto the cookies using custom 3D moulds, highlighting the beauty of the language and emphasizing each flavor’s identity.

The color system plays a key role: yellow and green represent Penang’s warmth and energy, while vibrant secondary colors differentiate each flavor clearly. The overall design blends traditional cultural elements with a youthful, modern aesthetic, making it both local and globally appealing.