Client: True Nut Company

Services Provided:

• Packaging Design
• Illustration
• Pattern Design
• Social Media Graphics

The Story:

The owner of this company wanted to build a new business to teach his 8-year-old daughter to teach her about entrepreneurship. They started out by making 6 flavors of maple roasted almonds and selling them at a local farmers market. The feedback was so positive and customers kept asking where else they could get them aside from the weekly market. Given the feedback, True Nut met with with several grocery and specialty food stores, but they all had the same feedback – they loved the product, but it would never sell because of the packaging.

The Brief:

The brief was very open-ended. They had a logo that they wanted to keep, but it needed a bit of refinement. Other than that, the only parameters were to make something fun and unique that would get the product into stores and fly off the shelves.

The Solution:

The brand need a distinct personality, so we created Trueman R. Nutsworth, a squirrel in a buffalo plaid bomber hat. The packaging needed a very maple-centric feel, but each flavor needed to be visually different enough to be clear that they were a variety of maple roasted almonds. The flavors were original maple, maple basil, maple cayenne, maple coconut, maple ginger, and maple cinnamon. A color was assigned and pattern designed relative to each flavor. The patterns all feature a maple leaf, but also include an element that depicts the flavor. To further the brand’s personality, we couldn’t resist dressing Trueman up for their holiday social media posts.

The Results:

As soon as the new packaging launched, the stores couldn’t get their hands on the product fast enough. They sold more nuts in the first two months than they had in the previous two years combined.

*Winner of an American Graphic Design Award in the Packaging Category from GD USA Magazine in 2009.