WPP creative company Superunion has partnered with Guylian, the luxury Belgian chocolate brand, to create a new brand identity and packaging design for its iconic Seashell pralines. The new brand captures a romantic love story and a passion for chocolate of Guylian’s founders, Guy Foubert, a Belgian chocolatier and Liliane, who joined their names to create Guy-Liliane, or Guylian, for a new generation of chocolate connoisseurs.

Founded in 1958, Guylian, part of Lotte group, is one of the leading chocolate brands in the world, renowned for its iconic seashell-shaped pralines, produced in Sint-Niklaas, in Flanders province, Belgium, and sold in 120 countries worldwide.

Superunion was tasked with repositioning the brand, visual identity, and packaging design for Guylian’s range of products to reassert its iconic luxury position, the craftsmanship of its makers and the sustainable values of the company that source and produce all of its products with Fairtrade cocoa, palm, and soy-free ingredients, and committed to partnerships with cocoa farmers through the promotion of sustainable, entrepreneurial farming.

The new brand reinterprets the original story of the creation of Guylian Seashell chocolates, born from a creative collaboration between Guy, the developer of the original praline recipe of hazelnuts roasted in traditional copper kettles, and Liliane, who designed the sculptured Seashells with its marbled exterior, with dark, white and milk chocolate swirls.

Inspired by the Belgian coastline, where the love story of Liliane and Guy was born, and the iconic designs of its seashell hazelnut pralines, Superunion created a brand to capture the spirit of seaside living and the pleasures of a beachside treasure hunt.

The new colour palette uses “North Sea green”, the colour of the sea off the coast of Flanders, praline chocolate brown, and copper, a homage to its artisanal past, representing the colour of the copper kettles that Guylian has used for generations to make its signature hazelnut praline.

The concept of seaside living is brought to life through a new identity – an evolved wordmark, in the signature copper colour, with added foil for a tactile luxury feel, and a redrawn seahorse brand icon, simplified and reinterpreted for a digital age.

Superunion created a custom ‘seawave’ pattern, in signature colours, “ton sur ton”, or tone on tone, to signify the diverse range of product categories in packaging design and communications, and to create a sense of warmth and attention to detail, while art direction of the product photography was intended to capture natural daylight and the feeling of a seaside summer afternoon.

To launch the brand, the products have undergone a reformulation as part of a commitment from the brand to only use the best hazelnuts, which are roasted in their shells to give the chocolate an even more intense and irresistible taste. The packaging design is now fully recyclable, and will be rolled out across the full spectrum of products, including new seasonal gifting and special editions.