Oro Caoba which loosely translates to brown gold is an artisanal chocolate brand that produces chocolate sourced from Latin America.

The brief was to design packaging for two of their chocolate flavours.

They wanted the packaging to display the Latin American origin of the chocolate. The designer also had to source options for sustainable materials that could be used for packaging and present the best alternative.

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I decided to explore some ideas linked to the Latin American culture that I thought would be visually appealing and work well in context. I especially decided to focus on Mexican culture since I have more knowledge in that area.

I explored a few ideas that related to Mexican cultures such as Papel Picado, alebrijes, sarape patterns, traditional embroidery, and more. After some more thought on the best way to meet the brief, I decided to explore the idea of traditional Mexican embroidery. This idea was my favourite not only because I thought it had a lot of potential to tell a story through illustration but also because it could give me a chance to experiment with sustainable embellishments.

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After conducting some research I decided I would create a symmetrical pattern that told the chocolate-making process and I would also include some cultural elements. I wanted the illustrations to have a lot of intricate details to give the design a higher quality and give it a premium look.

I wanted both flavours to be differentiated but I wanted the pattern to remain the same, so I decided to use very opposite colours for each flavour, but I used the same pink for both flavours to establish some consistency.

 

When designing the packaging I wanted it to be unique, so I decided to create an envelope box and the illustration pattern would wrap around the back creating a triangle. The box would still be completely sealed even with the triangle flap open because the nutritional information would go under that.

I wanted the implement some finishes to my design to elevate the quality and highlight those elements in my design. I decided to have some elements such as the tree, sun, certain flowers, and a few more elements to be embossed. This would not only make it appealing to the touch, but it would also recreate the texture that traditional Mexican embroidery has.