«Zolotaya Marka» chocolate plates

The brand "Russia – a generous soul!" the first decided to take a place in the mass market segment with a line of handmade chocolate. Chocolate samples were planned to be made manually, and in the future to reproduce the result on an industrial scale. The original grocery plan required shifting the visual focus from the packaging to what's inside it.

The agency's team has moved beyond the "standard" branding approach, in which the entire design system is built around packaging, focusing its attention on the chocolate itself. The designers completely immersed themselves in the creative process, because the project lay in the basis of pure art and art.

— This project was an incredible experiment and at the same time a risk, — says Alexander Khitrin, head of the production of chocolate bars "Russia – a generous soul!". — We abandoned the industrial modeling of chocolate, which is the norm for the confectionery industry, and made a fairly free brief to the creative agency. The task was to create not just visually interesting chocolate, but chocolate sensation, which the buyer has never seen before and is unlikely to be able to find even in the most expensive chocolate boutiques.

— We had an unusual task in front of us, which at some point even seemed impossible, - says Jane Struk, art director of Depot, about the project. — After all, we had to manually create unique chocolates, the shape and design of which, in the future, the machine will be able to repeat.

In her kitchen, she tried to make the first samples herself. I melted chocolate on my own, poured it into molds, trying to immerse myself in the workflow of a professional chocolatier.

— Everything didn't work out right away, — Jane shares the subtleties of the work process. — We drew the design on the computer, then we tried to make a chocolate bar according to the created sketch. Then we sent the result to production — and it turned out that the equipment could not perform this or that element. It had to start all over again.

— It may seem to someone that creating a design for such a chocolate bar is nothing complicated, — complains Jane. — Just think: melt the chocolate, pour in nuts, crisps. Within a single plate, maybe it's simple. But when it comes to the industrial production of chocolate, which is made in a craft style, the possibility of replicating it — the design development process is much more complicated.

The designers had to figure out all the subtleties of the production line in order to find out: what kind of drawing it can recreate according to the developed 3D model of a chocolate plate. The result of the project was chocolate, in which the Depot team managed to preserve the unique aesthetics of handmade. And now everyone can try a real confectionery work of art by buying it in a nearby store.

Of course, the design of the "Golden Brand" also conveys the uniqueness of the product design, without breaking out of the general visual style of the "Russia – a generous soul!" lines. The front side of the package shows an imitation of a transparent window in which the texture and elements of tile decoration are visible. In total, three "duets" of flavors with their own design were developed: "in caramel", "in milk" and "in strawberry".