Allde is a food & beverages company based in Dubai, UAE. Their current portfolio includes spices, pulses, grains as well as bottled water and oils. They’re broadening their portfolio to include breakfast products, coconut oil, condiments, pickles and jams. They cater primarily to the large south asian expat population in the Middle East. But entering this competitive and crowded market is a design challenge.

The first change was Allde’s brand identity itself, which we redesigned for durability, visibility & brand-fit. The typography was customised to fit the demands of a parent-brand: convey stability and friendliness, versatility to pair with sub-brand names, visibility on the back of packaging, and to be bold but not intrusive.

Packaging design required a clear-eyed study of the retail market. With several established brands in the exact segment, and several new entrants, there was already a shift underway towards differentiation by old and new players. However, neither simplification, nor overdesign seemed to solve their need to be individually identified by the customer.

Our solution was to leverage the bold character of the brand identity itself to make an impact. The typographic logo and basic red-white color combination would headline every pack. The photography would follow suit, and depict the food item in a bold, uncluttered way, while leaving room for the audience’s colourful tastes.

Three packaging concepts have been delivered initially: breakfast bags or pouches, condiment boxes and pickle jars. The front of the bag and box packaging contains a short but evocative description of the food item or condiment as well as basic information in multiple languages such as Arabic and Malayalam.

The back of these packages have been designed and written for readability. This goes against some marketing cynicism that nutritional and other information must be thickly laid out to give packaged food an almost-mystic or quasi-scientific feeling of genuineness. The pickle jar design has been elongated for visibility and the imagery on the label laid out all-round the jar to make it dining-table friendly.