Keto bakery newcomer puts consumer illustrations, not ingredients, on front-of-pack

05 Mar 2021 --- Poland-based design agency PG Branding has designed the packaging for keto newcomer Fantasty Food, putting customer drawings – not ingredients – on front-of-pack.

Instead of focalizing the product’s visuals, such as illustrating ingredients and textures, the emphasis is on situations where the product can be consumed.

With this tactic, PG aims to showcase how the Fantasty hot chocolate, protein powder and cake mixes “suit everyone.” The target audience includes office goers, students and athletes looking to easily adopt a keto diet.

“We decided to make an emotional accent and pay respect to the unique selling propositions that are even more important than ingredients,” PG’s creative director and co-founder Witalij Jackiewicz, tells PackagingInsights.

“When you see [the product] is suitable for your type of diet, you’ll take the package to look closer. This interaction is halfway to selling the product.”

The personalized designs allow individual consumers to identify themselves in each pack.Keto cravings
Keto diets are low carb, stimulating the body to produce ketones in the liver for energy.

PG highlights that keto food packaging usually contains information about the product, which may not elicit an emotional response from the consumer.

To elicit emotional connotations with its target demographics, the company selected “more relaxed and homely” images for its cake mixes and hot chocolate packages, while choosing to display sporty heroes on its protein packs.

These designs were chosen to clearly illustrate each product’s applicability for sports, travel, work, study or “just for relaxation and good mood.”

Avoiding stereotypes
The idea was to depict faceless, genderless silhouettes to allow consumers to broadly identify themselves with each product. However, for this to be successful, it was crucial to remain “as neutral and inclusive as possible” with the illustrations, notes Jackiewicz.

“When you have a lot of characters, you can follow the path of stereotypes. Our goal is to draw interesting characters, but be streamlined and not offend anyone with random stereotypes or stigmas,” he flags.

For example, he explains an unchecked bias might lead to the portrayal of a person of Indian appearance in a turban, although most other characters are not obviously characterized by nationality or ethnicity.

Directing the consumer’s eye
PG used a grainy digital illustration style for this project’s unconventional approach. Every product differs in color for more effective on-pack differentiation.

“The most important elements of this design are illustration and color grading. Every illustration should be unique, but still emotional and informative,” Jackiewicz explains.

“You might also notice that there is a lot of text on the packaging. The text part allows you to emphasize the products’ broad unique selling propositions: suitable for different diets, for different lifestyles, keto, paleo and so on.”

“We use a simple and easy-to-read sans-serif typeface that – due to the difference in mass and volume – leads the consumer’s eye in the right direction.”

By Anni Schleicher

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