Planet Propaganda Crafts a Distinctive Box To Reflect an Evolving Brand of Chocolates

Markus Candinas, a Swiss-trained confectioner, has been crafting his premium chocolates for over a decade with considerable success. His Candinas Chocolatier company in Verona, WI, was beginning to see more mail order and Web site business, and Candinas was looking into new equipment that would, among other benefits, improve the smoothness of the chocolate in his treats. The time was right to create new packaging that reflected how he and his art had matured.

The new Candinas chocolate boxes create an appealing contrast between straight lines on an outer sleeve and different radius curves of "squircles" on the box top.

Candinas called on the talents at Planet Propaganda in Madison, WI, to help him reinvent his packaging. Candinas is not shy about technology, and he wanted to have the packaging reflect that. To help Planet Propaganda develop ideas for the new packaging, Candinas brought Planet Propaganda some "mod" items from the mid-20th century that had the feeling he was looking for. Planet Propaganda took the directive to create packaging that showed the brand had evolved into something more hip, a little less precious, yet still organic.

The new machinery from Europe gave Candinas the ability to create a rounded square shape that was nicknamed "squircle." This more angular shape would also improve the ship-ability of the chocolates, because there would be less tumbling around and less damage to the chocolates. Greg Wold, brand manager at Planet Propaganda, thought the squircles would make a nice motif and a nice contrast to the other, straight line concept he was working on.

The Candinas box comes wrapped in a tight outer sleeve that hides the squircles on the inner box, allowing for a pleasant discovery moment or two during opening. And even though the inner box has squircles, most new customers probably don't expect the candy pieces to be that shape the first time. Before opening, a round die cut in the outer sleeve reveals the original Candinas logo, which both Wold and Candinas felt had too much equity to change.

"We took two concepts and made them work together," Wold explains. All the colors on the boxes were derived from the color palette of the previous packaging. The challenge as Wold remembers it was: "Can we extend the color palette so each box has its own color?" The task was like a big puzzle to make the elements work together, and Planet Propaganda experimented with many variations on the color schemes.

Candinas remembers asking after each revision: "But is it perfect?" After many iterations of color combinations, they actually came back to one of the first. "We had to go through the process to make sure we weren't wrong," Candinas says. Aside from the unique color combination, the box also differentiates the brand from other premium chocolates because it has no gaudy foil and only an understated satin finish on the box and sleeve.

Candinas is pleased with the new boxes, finding them both "individual" and "refined." Candinas keeps his treats reasonably priced at $41 for a box of 36, which is about a pound, even though his chocolates are equal in quality to chocolates that fetch $70/lb. Candinas did think about the consumer who has a twinge of guilt when discarding a beautiful package, so he wanted to make the box "nice, but not so nice." To take care of some of that guilt, all the components of the box are all recyclable.