Cadbury Rebrand

A full brand manual repositioning Cadbury as a luxury, craft-led sub-brand, built around rural Indian craftsmanship, heritage storytelling, and eco-conscious packaging.

Branding and packaging

01: Concept

This project repositions Cadbury as a luxury sub-brand, built around rural Indian craftsmanship, heritage storytelling, and eco-conscious packaging. Rather than treating the chocolate bar as a mass-market snack, the identity ties it to a specific place, specific artisans, and a specific production story.

The goal was shifting perception from familiar and generic toward premium and intentional, without abandoning what still reads as unmistakably Cadbury.

02: Process

Work began by questioning what Cadbury's narrative could become if it leaned into craft and origin instead of staying broad and mass-appeal. The existing identity read as warm but not premium, so before any visual decisions, the brand's positioning needed defining first.

Every subsequent choice, be it the colour palette, typography, or packaging material, was tested against that positioning rather than aesthetic preference alone. This meant repeatedly asking whether a direction still felt like chocolate carrying a cultural story or whether it had drifted into generic luxury branding disconnected from the concept.

03: Iterations

Three colour directions were tested before settling on deep cocoa browns paired with aged cream, chosen for how closely they aligned with the craft and heritage angle over cooler, more corporate palette options. Typography went through several pairings, like a classical serif paired with a cleaner secondary typeface, etc., until the combination felt warm without losing premium weight. Logo explorations pushed toward simplified linework before arriving at the final wordmark, which needed to read as heritage-driven rather than decorative.

04: Outcome

The final brand manual pairs a serif primary typeface with a clean secondary, built on a palette of deep cocoa brown and aged cream. The wordmark carries the craft-heritage

direction across every touchpoint, from packaging to supporting collateral, giving the rebrand a consistent visual language rather than a single standout asset.

05: Key Takeaways

The hardest part of this project wasn't building the visual system; it was deciding what the brand actually stood for before making a single design choice. A brand manual only functions if it protects a clear idea rather than a loose collection of nice-looking assets. Every decision was dependent on one question: Does this still feel like chocolate with a cultural story? It kept the direction disciplined instead of decorative.

Timeline

16 Weeks (2024)

Team

Team Project

Contribution

Full project

Type of Project

Print & Editorial

01: Concept

Early sketches tested full-bleed imagery, split columns, and type-led layouts before landing on a consistent duotone treatment to unify all 52 entries.

02: Process

The project began by identifying 52 concept pairs that could each be anchored to a real historical artwork or scientific illustration, spanning astronomy, anatomy, botany, and beyond.

Once the pairs were locked, the challenge shifted to layout: how do you make 52 entries, each pulling from a completely different visual source, feel like one cohesive book rather than 52 unrelated posters?

Science and art have never been separate. Anatomists needed artists to record what they saw. Astronomers needed illustrators to map the sky. The glossary explores the symbiotic relationship between scientific progress and artistic innovation.

Through pairing 52 scientific and artistic concepts across the full alphabet, from alchemy to zoology, each entry is based on a historically significant artwork or scientific illustration.

Before landing on the final look, multiple type styles were tried and dropped. Such as cut-out blackletter, glowing gothic type, and oversized single letters lit from behind. Full-bleed images, split columns, and type-heavy layouts were also tested.

Some versions used bold colours; others went almost colourless. Each idea was pushed as far as it could go, then pulled back until it actually worked.

04: Final

In the end, two colours per letter and a consistent halftone texture were used for the whole book. Duotone was chosen deliberately over full colour to represent how the two vastly different fields can merge together in order to create something beautiful.

The deliberate choice to use a duotone effect rather than the original full-colour images unified wildly different historical artworks such as Rembrandt, Escher and da Vinci into a single visual register, making the book feel like a designed system rather than a collage.

Constraints, when chosen intentionally, become the strongest design tool.

05: Key Takeaways

03: Iterations