VOLTA’s typographic, playful identity and packaging for GLAD celebrate the simple joy of chocolate

Porto-based design studio VOLTA have worked with bean-to-bar chocolate brand GLAD to craft its playful, ingredient-celebrating identity and packaging design; embracing the feel-good nature of chocolate and the simple happiness it brings. As embodied not only in the brand’s name but also in its spontaneous, bouncy logomark, a sense of joy bleeds across GLAD’s visual language; typographically manifesting within the characterful contrast of its hero typeface, KyivType Sans from Dmitry Rastvortsev.

“It is the only typeface used for GLAD,” Creative Partner Pedro Vareta tells us, “we chose it because of the amazing and yet subtle differences in its entire family,” calling upon its practical range of high, medium, low contrast and thin midline. “This allowed us to play with the axes of weight and contrast,” Vareta continues, “getting great coherence but also great versatility in our layouts,” not only on the packaging and digital spaces but, satisfyingly, on the chocolate bars themselves.

Discussing more of the decision-making behind GLAD’s identity, Vareta turns to the vibrant use of colour, explaining, “we went for a warm palette of six colours that show pleasant and happy feelings related to chocolate,” utilising each colour set in creating GLAD’s ‘Single Origin’ range. “We tested all sets of colour combinations and chose the ones that looked ‘tastier,’” Vareta concludes, “for the Inclusions (flavoured) chocolate range, we used colours that relate to the flavours themselves,” opting for softer tones that form a complementary relationship with the primary hues.

VOLTA

GLAD