Can you hear chocolate?

Well, Otherway’s packaging for Fortnum & Mason turns the chocolate bar packaging into a soundtrack that operates as visual grammar, suggesting rhythm and pacing in place of flavor callouts. The concept is inspired by neurogastronomy, the scientific study of how the brain creates flavor by integrating all five senses.

Tom Moore, Design Director of Otherway notes,“Fortnum’s long-standing relationship with music, from its archives to the piano at the heart of the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, helped anchor the concept and ensured it felt authentic to the brand. Tone was crucial: inventive, but always refined.”

Throughout the packaging, the typography is deliberately restrained. Serif letterforms sit with quiet authority, neither nostalgic nor starkly modern. “Each bar has its own personality, rhythm, and mood, but they all clearly belong to the same family,” Moore says. “That balance of individuality without chaos is where the idea really comes to life, and it’s what gives the range its sense of character and collectability.”

Nothing competes for attention. The hierarchy is disciplined, which is crucial given the musical material threaded through each pack.

Instead of literal cues like brown for dark or pink for fruit, the palette operates through tonal suggestion. Soft greens, powder blues, chalky lilacs, and saturated ambers read like movements in a larger suite. Individually, each bar has its own register. “Color was used to express mood rather than literal flavor. Each bar needed its own character, but the range had to work as a unified whole,” shares Moore “A consistent structure and restrained approach ensured cohesion, while shifts in tone allowed individual flavors to stand apart.”

The illustrations, by Victoria Semykina, are line-drawn and gestural, recalling early twentieth-century editorial art and stage set sketches. Conductors, dancers, fountains, birds, and abstracted instruments appear as if caught mid-motion. Musical notation weaves through them, sometimes orderly, sometimes unruly, reinforcing the idea of sound translated into image. There are hints of European concert posters and whimsical theatre programs, but filtered through a contemporary editorial lens.

What sets this design apart in a crowded premium chocolate category is its refusal to explain itself. While competitors rely on indulgent imagery or exhaustive tasting notes, Otherway leaves space for interpretation. 

“Sound and taste are experiential by nature, while packaging is static. The challenge was resisting the urge to explain too much,” mentioned Moore. “Instead, we focused on suggestion, creating a visual language that hints at rhythm and movement and invites the consumer to engage more deeply.”

The packaging invites attention through craft, rewarding those who look closely and elevating it to something worth collecting rather than discarding.