When Beatriz first brought us her four bars, each one had a full label: the farm, the percentage, the tasting notes, a short paragraph about the roast. All of it was true and none of it was read.
A buyer in a shop gives a bar about two seconds. In that time they see a colour, a shape and, if they are lucky, a word.
One word on a band
We moved everything except the name onto the back of the wrapper and put the name on a single band of cream paper. Then we started making the band narrower.
- Wide bands looked like labels, and labels look like supermarket chocolate.
- Narrow bands let the coloured paper do the work, and the colour is what tells the four origins apart.
- At eighteen millimetres the name still read from across the shop, and the bar still looked like paper.
The band is the only part of the wrapper that says anything. Everything else is colour and paper.
What the band has to carry
A narrow band leaves no room for anything but the name, so the name has to be set well. We spaced the five capitals wide, so they fill the band edge to edge, and printed them in the darkest colour of the range.
The band is also the seal. A buyer has to slide it off to open the bar, and that small moment is the first time they hold the brand in their hands.
