Kaeley Slaney | Communication Designer Kaeley Slaney | Communication Designer
Projects
- Mother’s Day Packaging

Mother’s Day Packaging

The target audience for the Mother’s Day collection at Purdys Chocolatier and the primary customer profile for the company are almost exactly the same demographic: women in their 40s, typically with children, primary purchasers for their household, and party planners. This population also likes to use Pinterest extensively, so research on trends and interests is mostly amalgamated in one place. Botanicals, layering, floral and geometric wreaths, and insects were all motifs that I saw being used and repinned a lot, especially in regards to wedding decor, card making, tattoo designs, and home decorating. Looking at all these trends, I selected the botanical bee and luna moth as hero motifs, which were motifs that were building in popularity during each year, and pair them with the existing floral illustrations created by Creative Manager Jenna Read.

Client: Purdy Chocolatier
Date: 2022
Services: Packaging Design, Art Direction, Illustration

The 2023 update kept only the shell of the florals, the colours were updated to be soft gradients and the texture came from linework within the petals, pulling more of a wood block or tattoo style influence into the work. As the linework of the florals were now so strong, I used them as the background element that pulled all the pieces of the collection together: it is on a gloss plate with a very slightly lighter colour on the moth tin, over the entire background of the Happy Mother’s Day sleeve and on the sides of the Mom’s Emergency Stash box. The sides of the 2 box sleeves are also inverse of each other: one coloured in and one just the linework.

Both collections used specialty finishes to augment their designs. 2021 uses embossing on the tin and diecuts on the sleeve to reinforce the layering of objects seen on them. The 2022 collection uses embossing on the moth tin and the Happy Mother’s Day sleeve to reinforce the focal points and gloss plates to add extra punch to the background floral lines and the main illustrations on the tin and the lettering on the Mother’s Day Sleeve.

Some of these items continued to exist side by side on the shelves, even though they are collections from 2 separate years. This means that it is important that the collections don’t jump too far ahead of the previous years in terms of visuals. I felt it important to showcase items from multiple years to present the line of direction that runs between them as well as the seasonal motifs that remain year after year: the colour palette. This alternating year refresh also lifts some of the “burden” from designers: there’s already a stepping-off point design-wise to base the art direction from and there’s no need to have to design an entire collection every year, which allows for more time per piece for design.

To update the existing floral elements to match in with the new assets, the 2022 season with the bee kept the watercolour texture of the existing florals, but masked them exactly within the linework, instead of the jaunty look of the 2021 season.

For more specifics on print production for packaging design, I’ve written a blog post detailing my process.

2022 Packaging Design

2022 Art Direction