Studio Tyrrell positions chocolate maker Manta around its ingredients — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
Manta is a British bean-to-bar chocolate maker whose cacao is Fino de Aroma, grown on an organic farm in Madagascar and fermented but never roasted, to keep the beans’ raw benefits. It never uses dairy, refined sugar or chemical additives, so its sweetness comes from Jerusalem artichoke syrup, dehydrated juices, freeze-dried fruits and berries, and coconut palm flower nectar. Studio Tyrrell was brought on board to create the brand strategy, identity, creative direction, packaging and digital design.
With many chocolate brands cutting cocoa content and replacing it with cheaper alternatives, Studio Tyrrell instead positioned Manta around its ingredients. “For Manta, the ingredients aren’t supporting information; they’re a central reason to choose the product,” Founder & Creative Director Oliver Tyrrell tells us. “Putting them on the front makes their quality immediately visible and makes choosing easier, particularly for people with specific dietary needs.” Manta sells the bars directly through its website. “Standing out on a crowded shelf was less important,” Tyrrell adds. “We had more control over how the brand was presented, which allowed us to communicate the product on its own terms.”
The ingredients line, the product name and a descriptor sit on one panel on the front of the pack. On the Mylk pack, for example, that line names cacao beans, almonds, oats, grape juice and pine nut oil, and is set in Matter of Sorts’ serif Quadrant Text. “We treated the ingredient list as part of the identity, giving it enough space to become one of the pack’s primary elements,” Tyrrell explains. The product name sits beneath the line in uppercase Die Grotesk from Klim Type Foundry, “with enough weight to give each flavour a distinct presence,” he details. The descriptor below that is in Quadrant Text Mono. “With three distinct typographic voices in the system, the challenge was to make them work together while giving each a clearly defined role.”
The four bars are Mylk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, Strawberry and Sea Buckthorn & Blood Orange. “We gave each product its own distinct palette, using colour to define the individual flavours,” Tyrrell continues. “Across the range, consistent materials and typography hold these palettes together as one brand. Colour could then do much of the expressive work, allowing the packaging itself to remain fairly simple.”
“We found an existing typeface that felt perfect for the brand,” Tyrrell reveals of Manta’s wordmark. “Its handmade forms looked almost drizzled. We approached the original designer and worked with her to redraw several characters specifically for Manta. The logo was then printed using raised foil, giving it an even more liquid quality.” The handmade mark sits low on the pack, outside the panel with the rest of the information. Inside the pack, the bar is wrapped in foil and moulded with the same drizzled gesture as the logo.
Studio Tyrrell directed two sets of photography, one of the ingredients and one of the product. The first set is printed on ingredient cards, each with Manta’s own copy beneath the image. The same words appear on the brand’s homepage: “You’ll find our ingredients upfront because we are proud of them. Made from plants, chosen for their flavour and preserved to keep the nutrients they have when they’re alive.”
“We wanted the ingredient photography to resemble simple botanical studies,” Tyrrell explains, “a visual archive in which each ingredient is isolated and shown in its raw form. These images are intended to communicate rather than sell. In contrast, we wanted to introduce a photographic language that felt closer to the way chocolate is enjoyed. This imagery is more edible, bringing appetite and pleasure into the system. Together, the two approaches allow the photography to feel both informative and indulgent,” Tyrrell concludes.