It’s a Sunday – a chill day – it also happens to be Easter. So I thought to share a relaxed post of some pictures and thoughts of some Easter-marketed Swiss chocolate (and their packaging). I picked up these items while in Switzerland.
At the end of my last full day in Switzerland last March, I visited ST. Gallen’s Läderach chocolate shop to pick up some of their fabled goods. Among the most well-known chocolate brands in Switzerland, Läderach has been around since 1962. Of course with the Easter-themed goodies on sale, I couldn’t not pick them up to share with family once I got home.
Not pictured: the rest of the Swiss chocolate I brought over with me.
I felt that I had to pick up some chocolate eggs and a little hare. I did buy a nice pre-packaged selection of FrischSchoggi – that’s ‘fresh chocolate’ in English. Läderach’s FrischSchoggi are displayed as large slabs that can be broken up upon request of a customer and are priced according to weight.
Anyway, let’s look at the two Easter-related items that I bought. It’s an opportunity to critique at types of packaging design that I have not yet looked at.
It’s not strange to come across real hen and duck eggs stored in plastic boxes, but the type I’m most used to seeing are the cardboard variant. Here, the point to using plastic is that the consumer can see these hand-painted chocolates inside of the packaging. It’s not the most environmentally conscious choice of material, but it can be recycled.
For those wondering, the flavours of chocolate eggs inside are strawberry, milk, and orange!
The wrap around cardboard label is predominantly beige with cocoa-coloured silhouettes of springtime grass, flowers, and… flecks of pollen!? The matte finish on the wrap around features the brand’s logo in raised gold foil text. It’s mature and understated, and to me, it speaks ‘luxury’. Definitely this is a treat for the adult market.
All of the ingredients and storage instructions of Läderach confectionary are in German. On the back of the chocolate egg box, the weight, storage, expiry date, and ingredients are found on a white sticker with black text which is slapped onto the underside of cardboard wrap. Note that the sticker acts to further secure the cardboard wrap, along with two smaller, round stickers.
Thinking about the product from an ethical perspective, the use of plastic isn’t great, but overall, the materials used to make this egg box can be recycled, and that’s good. As stated before, the plastic material chosen allows for the potential customer to see the product while keeping the chocolate both safe and clean. After all, the nature of this consumable can’t be compared to say, a fruit, which doesn’t need packaging at all.
These small, stylised chocolate hares are so cute that I had to pick one up for myself! The mould is elegant and sleek, but the painted eye adds a cute (and maybe a somewhat perturbed) look. Cleo came in many flavours. The mini Cleo that I picked up is raspberry, but the option of milk and dark chocolate were there.
These little chocolate hares stand up inside a plastic bag, with a cardboard backing for support. There’s a sticker atop each bag adorned with the store logo. From the front, the strip of cardboard support has a simple grass field illustration and the product name at the top. At the base of the cardboard backing is the ‘Chocolatier Suisse’, printed in gold, in the same font that adorns base of many of their year-round packaging.
Speaking of the standard packaging, the Läderach branding uses almost exclusively white, gold, and black. (Can’t really go wrong with those colours.)
The back of the Cleo product shows the legally required product information which is stickerd onto the back of the plastic bag, made visible by the white of the cardboard strip. The sticker label states the weight, storage, expiry date, and ingredients of the treat.
The overall presentation of the product is unfussy by design. The packaging used can be recycled, but it is less so than a traditional cardboard package that Easter confectionary is often sold in. I don’t believe that I have seen moulded chocolates presented individualy like this in any other shop, so to me, the packaging is somewhat of a novelty!
In the future, I’ll keep in mind Läderach’s packaging design in comparison to our equivalent domestic products aimed at the same audience. The pervasive usage of white and gold is light and friendly, yet chic. Läderach definitely has it’s own identity, even if it’s a relatively young company in the grand scheme of chocolatiers!
DESIGN WORKS 
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