Description:

At Christmas time in 2021, the world felt like a dramatically different place from 12 months prior. It was a time to read the room and create a client gift that felt like an appropriate gesture for our family of client friends. Taking stock of the year that was, the path we’ve travelled together but alone, that strangely brought us closer together. Sharing the bad with the good, chaotic times, but at times, almost calm. Remembering we all had little choice but to embrace and adapt to a new way of living and working. Aotearoa isolated in lockdown but unified in spirit. At the year’s close, we wanted to make sense of that jumble of feelings, and acknowledge the tough times while also sending some good vibes out, as we moved forward towards whatever was next.

Bitter Sweet was not only a gift to share, but a share of the feelings we had all experienced in different degrees, that bonded us even more deeply. The design concept needed to reflect the ingenuity that the pandemic had demanded of us and the emotional reaction to it. The approach was to share a taste of the year – literally - with a custom made chocolate that was purposefully Bitter Sweet – flavouring the lows and the highs, the bitter countered by the sweet. A visceral experience of the emotions we’d all tasted throughout the year.

We created Bitter Sweet by collaborating with the House of Chocolate to create a bitter, yet sweet feeling for clients and partners in the year that was. Dark Chocolate with pistachio, raspberries & coconut flakes. An interactive gift, with a bitter sweet slab of prose to set the scene and a sweetly crafted typographic treat, with a few sharper moments. A custom typeface was developed – ‘Bitter Sweet Display’ - designed for the year that was bittersweet, supported by a rich palette of tertiary colours. We included a mallet in the box to aid in breaking up the sweet – or smash 2021 to pieces if they so inclined – to mark the end of a time while looking ahead to brighter times.

Bitter Sweet takes a positive attitude to a tricky moment in time, with relentless optimism and gratitude. Grateful to have our health, our clients, and our triumphs throughout a tough year, savoured, shared then put to tastebud memory.