Fortnum & Mason Halloween Puts The Quirk In Halloween

We've long admired how Fortnum and Mason delicately balance their rich heritage with a dedication to the experimental and contemporary. Their signature brand feel reflects their proud history of working with interesting artists and illustrators through the ages.

Fortnum and Mason have celebrated Halloween with their exclusive range for 15 years and they’d been running their current design for the past four years. Fortnums wanted to completely reinvent their offering, making the range more sophisticated and appealing both to families and Fortnum and Mason’s discerning core customer base.

We were commissioned to create a packaging concept for the Halloween range considering everything from tea to chocolate and confectionery, creating a comprehensive design system. Creative product names inspired visual cues and we leaned into the emerging trend of decorating with gourds for Halloween, adding character to make them quirky and personality-rich. Our theme of ‘pumpkins and gourds in all their eccentric shapes, textures and sizes’ gave us a flexible design system across multiple packaging formats.

Our illustrations retain the brand's trademark wit and humour with autumn-like colours and contemporary pops of purple, yellow and green. On certain products we produced what looks like an autumnal pattern but upon closer inspection elements such as witches fingers, appear to be creeping out from the undergrowth. Accompanied by further autumnal cues such as leaves and branches, the pumpkins and gourds turn into mischievous witches, skulls and imps. Illustrated by our talented collaborator Kate Larsen, the spellbinding range was created to delight and fright and offer a sense of discovery.

The range was sold in stores across the UK, Hong Kong, online and wholesale.