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terra doce

I was tasked with creating a modular branding system for a single-origin candy bar that highlighted the culture of the chocolate's country of origin. I chose Brazil as my country and selected the name "Terra Doce" which means "Sweets of the Earth" in Portuguese.

concept

I spent a lot of time researching Brazilian art and culture before I began any sketching. I wanted my design solution to really capture and celebrate the rich culture of Brazil. I studied the work of famous Brazilian artists: Volpi, Borges, Marx, and Serpa. I also found that a common folk art form in Brazil is printmaking, specifically woodblock carving. Some recurring stylistic tendencies of the Brazilian art were: vibrant colors, high contrast designs, imperfect and rough textures, and abstracted natural elements. I decided to have my illustrations represent important aspects of Brazil such as plant life and indigenous animals. For my color palette I wanted to mimic the bright tones and contrasts found in Brazil artwork, and also pick up the subtle and rich tones of chocolate. I ultimately decided to do an overarching graphic and color system across all three bars. This would help show cohesion amongst the designs and would allow me to have the vibrant oranges, reds, and yellows of Brazil, but contextualize them with the darker chocolate tones also featured.

process

I created a pattern out of Brazilian animals: a jaguar, dart frog, and macaw, manipulating the pattern layout so that one animal would be highlighted on each bar while still having the pattern flow through all three bars. For the inner wrapping, I originally was going to use aluminum foil as I thought it was a better alternative to plastic. I was shocked to learn aluminum foil is actually 7x worse for the planet! I spent some time looking for alternatives already on the chocolate market, but I couldn't find any. I finally came up with the idea of using beeswax wrap. It can seal the product and then is reusable for any number of applications and becomes a lasting marketing material while simultaneously being better for the planet. I decided to carve a stamp of each fruit and handprint a different fabric for every flavor. and turn the fabric into beeswax wrap. The hand-carved and printed fabric helped convey the artisanal quality of the chocolate and the texture was also reminiscent of Brazilian woodblock prints.

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