Like supermarkets worldwide, Australian grocer and Vertex Award winner Coles has seen growth in “better for you” healthy food. Embracing the trend, Coles created a Retail Brand (private brand) vegan chocolate bar range that is both indulgent and healthier.

The design for the new vegan chocolate bars takes inspiration from nature, from wild waters to dusty rocks; the colors, textures, and illustrations feel grounded and approachable, just as vegan chocolate should. Further, the gold foil on the packaging gives the bars a more indulgent cue.

The Vegan, gluten-free, nut-free chocolate made with 65% cocoa embrace growing healthy eating habits.

Australian agency The Thrills was engaged to create an identity that would allure and engage the shopper. A consumer who cares about the food they’re putting in their body – and the place it comes from. In this case, that place was Australia.

Batch-made in Australia, the chocolate tells a proud origin story rich enough to inspire an identity that delivered an elevated chocolate experience. We explored our country’s natural landscapes and identified those that felt intrinsically, authentically, and uniquely Australian.

We borrowed textures, patterns, and colors from nature, from wild waters to earthy plains to rusty rocks, and reimagined them through illustrations that felt premium and decadent. To build on the origin story, the agency leaned on poetic interpretations of Australia explored in Dorothea Mackella’s ‘My Country.’

Finally, the team married the aesthetics that define Australia’s landscape with the authentic flavors at hand, and the Sunset Series was born. A mint chocolate design inspired by our refreshing oceans. An orange chocolate design influenced by our dusty deserts. And a toffee chocolate design grounded in our rocky lands.

Sitting neatly within Coles’ new and flexible Retail Brand design system, this identity feeds into the overarching notion of ‘Value the Australian way.’ It hits the sweet spot between delicious indulgence and making healthy choices.