Last week, I highlighted some delicious Irish food packaging design that I find appetising. This week, I’ve set my sights beyond our island to point out some of the tastiest packaging I’ve come across on my travels.
An area of food packaging where the bar has been raised internationally is chocolate. The shape of a traditional, rectangle chocolate bar can allow for ample wrapping space and thus the perfect canvas for a bit of creativity.
On a recent trip to Iceland, I stuffed my hand luggage with a stash of OmNom chocolate bars, which I intended to give as gifts but obviously ended up eating myself. This bean to bar chocolate is handcrafted by chef turned chocolatier Kjartan Gislason and his team. The geometric animals that adorn the packaging are reflected in the geometric lines of the chocolate bar. Instead of breaking off simple squares to chomp, geometric patterns have been designed into the molds. See it for yourself at omnomchocolate.com.
Another great gift from Iceland is Saltverk, hand- harvested sustainable sea salt from the Westfjord of Iceland. Not only is the packaging evocative of the stark beauty of this gorgeous country, the salt inside is a keepsake of its volatile nature, such as the black lava salt and Arctic thyme salt. I was particularly sad to reach the end of my pot of birch-smoked salt. Though they're not available to buy online, you can find out more at saltverk.com.
I returned from San Francisco with jars of Big Spoon Roasters' nut butters, including the delectable Chai Spice and the insanely good Salted Caramel nut butter flavours. Their packaging relies on the simplicity of mason jars, and the allure of an illustrated spoon. This handcrafted nut butter is made in North Carolina. See bigspoonroasters.com.
In the stunningly crumbling city of Porto in Portugal, I picked up a carton of José Gourmet sardines. Like chocolate, sardine tins lend themselves well to creative graphic design, and the Lisbon-based food company José Gourmet stands out from the crowd. The Owner Adriano Ribeiro wanted to call attention to José Gourmet through design, and enlisted the company's design partner Luis Mendonca to help. The results are superb - see examples of the work on about.josegourmet.com.
Upon returning from honeymoon in Morocco last year, my husband and I needed more orange blossom in our lives. I’ve always liked the ugly-beautiful aesthetic of the Cortas brand, though I think it’s mostly because the smells of the products evoke my love and connection to the Middle East, so it’s perhaps quite a personal example. This Lebanese company has been selling bottled and canned goods since the late 1920s, and I have bottles of its rosewater, orange blossom water and pomegranate molasses in my pantry at home at all times. They’re available in any good Middle Eastern shop in Ireland, and you can let me know if you find something beautiful in their labels too, or if I am just a big softie.
It would be remiss not to mention Mast Brothers Chocolate in a piece about pretty packaging. This Brooklyn- based chocolate company has made a virtue of their wrapping, designed by their creative director Nathan Warkentin for Rick and Michael Mast since 2012. Last year, however, Mast Brothers' bean-to-bar philosophy was questioned by US food blogger Scott Craig, who claimed the brothers were not making their chocolate from the bean when they started the company in 2007. It caused a mini furore online, with chocolate fanatics crying scandal, while defenders of the brothers used phrases such as "hipster schadenfreude". Almost every article on the controversy I read mentioned the brothers' beards, which, to me, seems to be neither here nor there.
The brothers eventually published an open letter on their website in December 2015, which stated that before they opened their first chocolate factory, they tested with couverture (a process of remelting chocolate) Valrhona as well as making chocolate from bean to bar.
“While we never claimed to make all our chocolate exclusively from bean to bar in those early days,” the letter explains, “we did describe ourselves as a bean-to-bar chocolate maker. Since we were in fact making chocolate from bean to bar, we honestly thought we could say as much.” In all the upset, the innovative beauty of the packaging has never been called into question, but the allegations left a bitter taste in the mouth for many.
If beautifully designed packaging is your thing, keep an eye on The Dieline, a website that collects images of clever packaging with a keen emphasis on food packaging.
