From humble beginnings to incredible packaging design
Still Life
DESIGNER:
DESIGNED BY THE OCELOT FOUNDERS
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CLIENT:
OCELOT CHOCOLATE
I’m writing this on the train home from a wintery weekend in Edinburgh, which is where I got the inspiration for this week’s post. The options were endless: Irn-Bru, canned haggis or beautiful Scotch whisky. In the end, I decided on Ocelot Chocolate, handmade in Edinburgh, Scotland.
It’s your classic start-up story. It begins with a recently married couple Matt & Ish doing what they love, making chocolate out of their kitchen and selling it at local farmers markets.
Originally it was nicely wrapped up in cellophane, but they always had grander plans for their packaging design. Ish studied illustration at art school and Matt was always a keen connoisseur of art and design, so they designed all of the Ocelot packaging themselves. They take great pride in making sure the flavours and origins of the beans are represented in each design.
The packaging is not your conventional shape, more square than the tall skinny rectangular blocks we’re familiar with. The white band at the bottom brings unity across the product range, and the rest of the packaging becomes a canvas for visual experimentation. Bright bold geometric shapes are formed using slightly wonky line work and are given painterly texture.
I purchased a block of their Blood Orange 70% Dark Chocolate from the Calton Hill Observatory. To me, the Blood Orange packaging design mirrors a still life fruit painting, an orange sitting on the edge of an outside table, blue skies and basking in the yellow warmth of the Sicilian late afternoon sun. It’s amazing how a few geometric shapes and some warm tones can draw out such emotive feelings.
Another example of still life oranges...
Fossil & Fawn’s 2018 Gewurztraminer design by Club has an orange adorning the front label for one simple reason. "This is an “orange” wine that literally, no joke, smells and tastes of oranges." For those of you who are wondering, Orange wine is not made from oranges - it's a type of white wine made by leaving the grape skins and seeds in contact with the juice, which gives the wine an orangy colour.
