OUGD401 - Practical Research Project - Final Design

Overall I am very pleased with this outcome as I feel that it exudes the quality of the chocolate without the packaging materials costing a lot. I also think that it is very successful at showing luxury through typographic and design choices only. 

I do feel that I could have experimented with things like foiling and embossing if I was to do this module again but I am pleased with the colours I chose to mimic gold.

I did have a few problems with the putting together of the packaging as by changing the net design from the original with the flap I miscalculated one of the edges leaving a gap at the top. But this isn’t that noticeable, it has just taught me to double check things before the final print.  

OUGD401 - Practical Research Project - Development

So after looking at more luxurious brands of chocolate I started on redesigning the Moser Roth brand. This first design was based on the design choices of the original packaging such as the colours used and wording. I feel like the white and blue clashes too much. The white background feels too empty and with black text on top it doesn’t look anything special and it doesn’t look luxurious which is my aim. I chose a serif font, again, to make it seem more sophisticated. The original packaging uses a mixture of Sans serif and serif so I wanted to limit it to one or the other. 

Based off the designs that I have researched I thought that I should try doing a design which was mostly black. I feel like the contrast of black and white is stronger, making the empty space seem less empty some how. I also added a touch of a ‘gold’ colour. I don’t want to use any fancy techniques within this design as I am keeping the target market in mind - if I make it look too luxurious people who shop at Aldi wouldn’t buy it as they would think that it is now out of their price range. So I wanted to make the design look sophisticated yet not too expensive.

After reviewing my previous design I felt as if the typeface was a bit too traditional looking and not contemporary enough for today’s market. So I found this contemporary yet still serif font to lift the design to look more modern. I also feel that this suits the origins of the brand as it has a slightly powerful German feeling to it. Yet I feel that this design is still lacking something.

Like in the Axococo design I added an accent of colour that works like a label over the black. I used a cream to represent the heritage of the brand as it was founded just under 200 years ago. I also added a small description onto the front to tempt people into buying the chocolate.

I took the mountain landscape from the original design which I think is based off the Stuttgart mountains near where the chocolate originates from. I do prefer the design with the illustration there but I feel that this illustration doesn’t suit this design. Maybe I could include illustrations that are relevant to the flavour of the chocolate (e.g. dark, milk etc.)

For the final designs I changed the illustration to something relevant to the flavour - so for milk it is a jug of milk and for dark it is cocoa beans. I feel this works a lot better as it draws your eye down the label rather than across it. I also added the nutritional values per serving onto the front like on the original packaging to make it look like the real packaging.

Additionally I put together the design of the back, keeping in mind that the design before was very cluttered I wanted to limit the information as much as possible and just keep the essential parts. I feel that the front and the back tie together nicely as they use the same label effect and elements of the gold. I personally much prefer this back design to the original. I could have utilised the rest of the black space at the bottom of the packaging but I feel that this works better as it corresponds with the front design. 

I also created a new wrap for the chocolates (as Moser Roth comes as 5 individually wrapped pieces). Once again taking elements from the design of the front I wanted to use the cream band with a black outer. I didn’t want to overcomplicate the wrapping as it will be thrown away so I just used the logo and nothing else. Any more information would have been unnecessary. 

OUGD401 - Practical Research Project - Revision of Practical Ideas

After having a critique for my initial ideas a lot of people said that having a neutral packaging was kind of pointless as it probably wouldn't sell due to it not having anything special about it to make people buy it. So I decided to come up with another idea that would represent my essay better, playing on consumers perception of quality. 

I looked again at my case study and decided that I should rebrand one of the chocolates that I used to represent what kind of reception it got. I was tempted to brand Lindt to look cheap and most people thought that this was the chocolate that tasted the least expensive. But I thought that this wouldn't be appropriate as I am trying to display that packaging can make people think that the product will taste better than it actually is due to the packaging alone. So I decided to go for one of the chocolates that scored highly and I chose Aldi's luxury brand Moser-Roth. I started researching the brand and found that it had quite an interesting heritage and it was it's own company before Aldi took it over in 2007. 


The History of Moser-Roth

The company was founded in 1841 by pastry chef Wilhelm Roth Jr. in Stuttgart. In 1876 Roth retired from the company and the small factory was taken over by Wilhelm Wagner and Kommerzienrat Sproesser. In 1881 the company moved to larger premises.

In 1896 Moser merged with its Stuttgart competitor E. O. Moser & Cie, which had been founded in 1846 by master confectioner Eduard Otto Moser (1818–78).

The brand name Moser-Roth was registered in 1902. Moser-Roth was the largest chocolate factory in Stuttgart in the 20th century, around 1910 employing as many as 550 people. Other chocolate companies in Stuttgart at the time included Eszet, Haller, Waldbaur, Schoko-Buck, Friedel and Ritter, of which only the last is still in existence.

Early in 1942, the company was shut down for political reasons by the German government. In September 1944, the entire factory burned down in an air raid.

Karl Haller of Stuttgart acquired the Moser-Roth brand name in 1947 and in 1948 resumed production in the Obertürkheim section of the city. After his death the Haller company was acquired byMelitta; chocolate production continued until 1967, after which the Moser-Roth brand name passed through various owners, being finally sold to Storck. Since June 2007 Storck has produced chocolate for Aldi at Moser-Roth GmbH, located in the Berlin borough of Reinickendorf. Moser-Roth is Aldi's premium brand of chocolate; it received an award from the German Agricultural Society in 2007.

THE CURRENT PACKAGING

The current packaging is created to appeal to people who shop at Aldi therefore it is made to look sort of expensive and luxurious, but not too much to put people off. I want to recreate this packaging so that it looks how people thought it tasted - like a really expensive chocolate. But I also want to produce this by using cheap methods, so it could still be produced cheaply and be able to be sold for the same price, it would just look better and hopefully reflect how people tasted it in my case study.

I went back to the drawing board and decided to sketch some ideas rather than go straight to digital this time. I was stuck between using a script typeface or a serif one to represent the quality of the product. By the side I also played around with monogram logo ideas however I realised that the combination of M and R made mister and would probably be read wrong  and not as a chocolate brand. 

The back of the packaging design I feel is very cluttered and I particularly don’t like the bar code going across the whole of the back.

OUGD401 - Practical Research Project - Luxury Chocolate Research

I like how this design is dominated by black a part from  the label where all the information is. Gold and pink accents have been used really effectively to lift out of the dark black and add more sophistication to the packaging. There is also subtle spot varnishing on the bottom of the packaging, although it is so subtle that I feel that it is not needed. The layout of the label itself is laid out in a really nice way - I feel that the hierarchy of the type is just right and the use of a simple illustration lifts it all. I feel like most of the sophistication of this packaging however comes from the typographic treatment. This shows that you can create a packaging that looks very expensive and glamorous for not much cost at all.

This very modern take on chocolate packaging combines pastel shades with contemporary geometric patterns to create a very sophisticated look. I like the use of blocks of black or white to frame the important information making the patterns do all the ornamentation. This particular brand was inspired by Japanese designs and was itself meant to be a japanese brand. From all of the designs that I have chosen to analyse black has been a dominant colour. I feel this is because black connotes sophistication, dominance, power and authority which creates an overall feeling of quality and stability. 

I started by looking at more expensive or luxury brands of chocolate. I found this brand Marou which uses metallic gold inks and contrasts it would blacks to give a very expensive look. It feels very exotic with Chinese styled illustrations and bright patterned background.  I think that there has been some embossing employed within the illustration on the packaging and techniques such as this will definitely make a product look more elegant and therefore better quality. I do really like the contrast between the black and gold within this packaging and I think that limiting the colour scheme makes a product seem more sophisticated which I feel this product lacks slightly.