Design Challenge and Design Ideas

Dynamo branding Agency partnered with Madagascan company Kuanza to create a premium, contemporary chocolate brand, with a purpose.

The idea behind producing MIA Chocolate, is that each and every single element of the product is created and manufactured by local communities in Africa. This heroes end-to-end manufacturing, from bean to bar. With this in mind, Dynamo’s brief was to package ‘amazing food that does good’. This became our internal mantra.

How the brief was fulfilled

We wanted our design to encapsulate the fair trade purpose behind the brand but also needed its artisan quality to compete against market leaders and luxury brands alike. It needed to be crafted but a polished, fashionable, contemporary craft. Conveying modern Africa and it’s cultural richness.
This is where the meaning behind the name came from – MIA stands for ‘Made in Africa’ but also stems from the latin for My, empowering all involved in this end-to-end collaboration. ‘My’ also represents the end consumer, giving them a range of distinct flavour profiles to choose from and experience.

Multi-sensory enjoyment was key – the quality, flavour appeal and ritual of enjoying chocolate is celebrated in our tactile, premium packaging. From bean to bar made and designed in partnership with the Kuanza team. To achieve this, and do justice to the integrity of the chocolates ingredients. We created a suite of bespoke patterns and iconography that celebrated the community and contemporary craft but avoided the clichés.

We used a tactile varnish, finished with embossed detailing across our premium packaging range. To further illustrate the brands premium attributes, we finished the bespoke African inspired patterns with hot gold foil. Inside our beautiful outer packaging the unique chocolate mould further enhances the consumption experience.
Our mascot the Sankofa bird, represents ‘learning from the past to create for our future’ and this weaves throughout our brand communications as brand iconography. This ethos will extend in to new product ranges and innovations in the community in the future, as MIA and it’s good work grows and grows.