Studio Tyrrell positions chocolate maker Manta around its ingredients

Manta is a British bean-to-bar chocolate maker whose cacao is Fino de Aroma, grown on an organic farm in Madagascar and fermented but never roasted, to keep the beans’ raw benefits. It never uses dairy, refined sugar or chemical additives, so its sweetness comes from Jerusalem artichoke syrup, dehydrated juices, freeze-dried fruits and berries, and coconut palm flower nectar. Studio Tyrrell was brought on board to create the brand strategy, identity, creative direction, packaging and digital design. With many chocolate brands cutting cocoa content and replacing it with cheaper alternatives, Studio Tyrrell instead positioned Manta around its ingredients. “For Manta, the ingredients aren’t supporting information; they’re a central reason to choose the product,” Founder & Creative Director Oliver Tyrrell tells us. “Putting them on the front makes their quality immediately visible and makes choosing easier, particularly for people with specific dietary needs.” Manta sells the bars directly through its website. “Standing out on a crowded shelf was less important,” Tyrrell adds. “We had more control over how the brand was presented, which allowed us to communicate the product on its own terms.” The ingredients line, the product name and a descriptor sit on one panel on the front of the pack. On the Mylk pack, for example, that line names cacao beans, almonds, oats, grape juice and pine nut oil, and is set in Matter of Sorts’ serif Quadrant Text. “We treated the ingredient list as part of the identity, giving it enough space to become one of the pack’s primary elements,” Tyrrell explains. The product name sits beneath the line in uppercase Die Grotesk from Klim Type Foundry, “with enough weight to give each flavour a distinct presence,” he details. The descriptor below that is in Quadrant Text Mono. “With three distinct typographic voices in the system, the challenge was to make them work together while giving each a clearly defined role.”