The all-natural pet food category is growing faster than a puddle of drool from a dog waiting for his bone. Most competition focuses solely on ingredients as their core message, but we wanted to go beyond the genuine ingredients and obvious health benefits. We wanted to tell the timeless tale of the enduring love between a dog and their human. We decided to show what was at the heart of ZolaChow, not just the guts.
This unique balance between an unadulterated, clean and natural product married with the colorful, intense and rich bond between a pet and its owner drove each aspect of ZolaChow’s story-book inspired design, beginning with the tagline and overarching brand narrative of “Pure food. Real love.”
With any good package design, each component must be kept on a tight leash. It would have been easy to go too far in any one direction with this brand launch–overly trendy, overly healthful, overly stylized, overly playful. But there is one thing that pet owner’s don’t pull back on and we didn’t either … good, old-fashioned love.
ZolaChow is basically the ‘Daily Harvest’ of dog food. Inspired to help foster a healthy, long life through clean eating, this direct-to-consumer dog food subscription service delivers frozen, healthy, completely unprocessed, portioned, human-grade meals. For pooches.
This push-pull of playfulness, heartfelt emotion, and healthful taste appeal carefully teases out across each design element of the package. A muted color palette focuses less on classic, bold flavor cues and gets more to the wholesome, natural core ingredients while nodding toward the serenity of a strong connection. A modern, stripped-down design can sometimes feel cold, but the mono-linear illustrations of characters with their furry friends add warmth. Not solely acting as versioning for flavors, these human-doggie look-alikes tell a humorous story of inclusion and relatability. Finally, a mix of traditional and modern typography delicately contrast the cheerful tone of the illustrations to connote a premium product.
