The Gorgeous Spice Company offers a series of highly versatile spice blends, supported by a rich media experience that includes recipes, kitchen playlists and product recommendations. Though its blends are available from regional boutique retailers near the company’s home in Canada’s Southern Georgian Bay region, most customers get theirs through an immersive monthly subscription experience.

The problem with the spice business, as the Gorgeous’ founder saw it, is that its products are either too prescriptive—“this is for chicken”—or too arcane, requiring technical ability that promotes elitism. The Gorgeous’ blends were created to subvert those extremes, combining fresh spices into coherent ‘can’t fail’ flavour profiles all their own. The results are products so versatile that they can literally be used on popcorn, and an accessibility that encourages both experimentation and liberal consumption.

The design solution was focused very much on dimensionalizing that end benefit in an equally subversive way. Rather than take the dangerous route of pedantically explaining these attributes, the series vividly implies them with a pastiche of cues from popular culture.

Blending these loose pop cultural references, each package brings its own attitude and style, like vinyl record covers, unlocking a completely different experience, brand world, and vibe for each blend.

Though sporting completely individualised typography and layouts, subtle design systems across the 12 packages emerge: A focus on leading with typography in the hierarchy, and repetition of core colours such as pink, red, orange and yellow start to show that each spice blend from The Gorgeous comes from the same creator. Finally, inspired by long-standing design and architecture magazines, a consistent masthead (in this case, footer) sports The Gorgeous’ logo and legal information.

The simple “album cover” approach, wrapping the spices and stapling to the black ziploc pouch, allowed the blends to be shipped in the mail and delivered through mail slots across North America.

In its 2 years since launch, The Gorgeous has been picked up by major food magazines in Canada, select boutique retailers, and a whole host of chefs, creators, and food lovers.