Lindt Chocolate Packaging Concepts — Character Illustration & Seasonal Retail Design

Packaging built around character

The concepts explored how illustrated characters could give seasonal chocolate packaging a stronger sense of personality and occasion.

Rather than treating the illustration as decoration added at the end, the character needed to work with the pack architecture itself: product window, logo area, silhouette, colour balance and the amount of visual information visible at retail scale.

For seasonal products especially, the image has several jobs at once. It has to feel festive, remain clearly readable, support the product and create enough narrative charm to make the pack feel appropriate for gifting.

Character design for retail packaging

The characters were developed to remain expressive even when reproduced relatively small on packaging.

That required clear silhouettes, readable gestures and enough facial expression to establish personality quickly. At the same time, the drawing could not compete with the chocolate itself or overwhelm the rest of the pack.

This is one of the useful differences between character work created for packaging and a standalone illustration: the character is part of a larger commercial object and has to perform within that system.

Character & Mascot Design →

Vector illustration for flexible packaging development

The artwork was created in Adobe Illustrator as scalable vector illustration.

That made the characters and decorative elements easy to refine, recolour and adapt while the packaging concepts were being developed. The same artwork could also be tested across wrappers, sleeves, cartons, display material and other formats without losing definition.

For an agency-led concept process, that flexibility is important. Ideas evolve quickly, and illustration has to remain editable while still looking polished enough to communicate the proposed direction clearly.

Illustration for FMCG & seasonal campaigns

Packaging for confectionery and other fast-moving consumer goods has to communicate within a very compressed space.

Brand, product, flavour or format, seasonal message and illustration all compete for attention. The job of the artwork is to strengthen that communication rather than make the pack harder to read.

These Lindt concepts therefore focused on a combination of:

• clear character silhouettes
• seasonal storytelling
• product visibility
• retail-scale readability
• adaptable vector artwork
• visual consistency across related concepts

Working inside an agency concept process

The project was commissioned through Rock Brasiliano and developed under the art direction of Stephan Eisenblättler.

That meant the illustration had to respond to an existing creative direction rather than exist as an independent piece of artwork. Characters, colour, packaging structure and presentation all developed within the broader concept.

I regularly work this way with agencies and creative teams: taking a visual brief, developing an illustration language and refining the artwork so that it fits cleanly into the larger campaign or design system.

Graphic Design & Creative Direction →

Commercial illustration that has to work on a product

A packaging illustration is successful when the drawing and the product feel as though they belong together.

That requires a different kind of decision-making from editorial work or a standalone image. Scale, hierarchy, cropping, print reproduction and the surrounding graphics all influence how the illustration is designed.

The same thinking applies across other forms of commissioned illustration: advertising, campaign visuals, branded characters and product-related artwork all need to function inside a wider communication system.

Commissioned Illustration & Campaign Visuals →