Blissful Ice Cream Indulgence: A Fresh Look for a Fresh Food

By Eric Van Osten

Take a minute to imagine the packaging of an organic dairy product such as milk, yogurt, or butter. Are you picturing that "old granola" look—something like a crudely-drawn image of a farmhouse, with the animals playing in the sun, the sunflowers blooming, and just lots of earthy colors everywhere? That is exactly the kind of look that Bliss Organic Ice Cream was trying to avoid.

Bliss Organic Ice Cream incorporated their clean, simple and natural identity into their package design, setting it apart from the "folky" competition.

"We wanted to create something fun for the consumer that sticks out in an organic marketplace, like Whole Foods," says Alex Rice, art director and designer at TDA Advertising, the firm that designed the package for Bliss. "When you go in one of these places, you are surrounded by seas of greens and browns everywhere."

Kim Troy, founder of the Bliss brand, chose TDA to create the packaging. She began developing recipes for some of her signature flavors of organic ice cream in 2004, including Rum Raisin, Honey Lavender, Lemon Blueberry, and everyone's favorite—Coconut Chocolate Chip. She was selling it at a coffee shop located across the street from TDA and was approached by Whole Foods to sell her product there, but she needed a package first.

Greg Stroh, the cofounder of Izze Beverage Co. and frequent customer of Troy's coffee shop, recommended that Troy use TDA because of the success he had found with them. Troy went to TDA with some design ideas in mind already, such as a curvy typeface and an exclamation point after "Bliss," but TDA produced designs with very clean and crisp lettering and no exclamation point. "I was very impressed with the changes they made to my original thoughts," she says. "I would never have thought to design it the way they did."

Organic design against type

Rice and TDA wanted the colors of the ice cream packages to correlate directly with the flavors inside. "We wanted colors that stood out but wouldn't scare the customer—colors that are inviting and indicate the flavor without having to read the label," says Rice.

Elements of design for Bliss include "spoonflakes," a Gotham font, and colors that correlate with the flavors.

Besides the colors, another eye-catching feature is the design of the snowflakes that are made of spoons, nicknamed "spoonflakes." Rice says: "I wanted to create something fun that was a take-off of a snowflake. They're cold like snowflakes, but made of spoons, which you use to eat the ice cream. We didn't want to make Bliss exciting; we just wanted to get the point across simply, but with a little flair."

The goal of the packaging was to capture the attention of the shopper buying ice cream who doesn't know what brand to buy. This would be the one that jumps off the shelf and says: Buy me! "The look combined with the taste is a good match—great ice cream with a solid look," says Rice. "We wanted to go for that one-two punch that would really work in an organic marketplace."

The design has dramatically enhanced Troy's business. Her product is now sold at Whole Foods and King Soopers in Boulder, CO. She is also opening a scoop shop that will offer 30 flavors. "When I do demos in food stores, people of all ages will approach me and say, 'Oh, I've seen that ice cream before and I've been dying to try it,'" says Troy. "Everything about it is clean. It's made of all organic ingredients, and the package is not cartoony like some other ice creams on the market, nor is it cluttered with stories and text. The product plus the package sells itself."

TDA has a 15-year history of success with clients such as Thule, Chipotle, and Smartwool, among others, and they enjoyed working with the unique Bliss brand. Rice says, "The beauty of this relationship was the product. It was fun to work on because the ice cream is so good!" Troy concludes: "I think it's important for any agency to understand the product they are working with. TDA put a lot of working into understanding mine and it really shows. They are creative, young, hip, and incredible."