Anthon Berg Packaging

Structural packaging for Anthon Berg Chocolate Liqueurs, built around Norse mythology.

Structural Packaging

01: Concept

Anthon Berg's chocolate liqueurs needed structural packaging built around the brand's Danish heritage rather than generic decoration. The design is based on Norse mythology, specifically the Vegvísir — an eight-directional compass symbol used as the box's octagonal form.

Since the chocolates themselves are shaped like miniature bottles, the outer packaging mimics that same silhouette rather than working against it. Structure carries the narrative here, not surface graphics.

02: Process

Development started with the structural form before any surface design, since a folding box like this succeeds or fails on mechanics, not decoration. Paper prototyping came first — physical mock-ups tested well before digital renders entered the process. Each fold pattern was assessed for stability under handling, ease of assembly, and how well it protected the bottle-shaped chocolates inside.

Once the octagonal petal-fold with a locking lid proved structurally sound, surface design moved forward: four line illustrations of Norse goddesses in an engraving style, set against navy, with Celtic knotwork functioning as ornamental dividers between panels.

03: Iterations

Four structural directions were tested in paper: a circular petal-fold, a hexagonal form, a stacked modular system, and multiple locking mechanisms. Each version got evaluated against the same criteria — stability, assembly ease, protective capacity for the bottles inside. Most looked viable flat on paper but failed the moment they were folded and handled. The octagonal petal-fold with a locking lid was the only structure that held up consistently across repeated assembly tests.

04: Outcome

The final packaging is an octagonal petal-fold box with a locking lid, printed with four hand-illustrated Norse goddesses set against deep navy. Celtic knotwork sits as a dividing motif between each face, reinforcing the mythological framework without overwhelming the illustrations.

A hand-assembled physical prototype confirmed the structure worked at production scale, not just as a flat digital render.

05: Key Takeaways

Building the structure in paper before touching a screen turned out to be the most valuable part of the process. Digital tools offer control, but paper prototyping reveals what actually holds under real handling and what collapses at the first fold. Testing structural viability early prevented wasted time refining surface illustration on a form that wouldn't have worked in production anyway.

Goddess Freyja

Goddess Frigg

Goddess Idun

Goddess Sif

Illustrated nordic pattern

Paper Prototypes

Timeline

16 Weeks (2024)

Team

Team Project

Contribution

Full project

Type of Project

Print & Editorial

01: Concept

Early sketches tested full-bleed imagery, split columns, and type-led layouts before landing on a consistent duotone treatment to unify all 52 entries.

02: Process

The project began by identifying 52 concept pairs that could each be anchored to a real historical artwork or scientific illustration, spanning astronomy, anatomy, botany, and beyond.

Once the pairs were locked, the challenge shifted to layout: how do you make 52 entries, each pulling from a completely different visual source, feel like one cohesive book rather than 52 unrelated posters?

Science and art have never been separate. Anatomists needed artists to record what they saw. Astronomers needed illustrators to map the sky. The glossary explores the symbiotic relationship between scientific progress and artistic innovation.

Through pairing 52 scientific and artistic concepts across the full alphabet, from alchemy to zoology, each entry is based on a historically significant artwork or scientific illustration.

Before landing on the final look, multiple type styles were tried and dropped. Such as cut-out blackletter, glowing gothic type, and oversized single letters lit from behind. Full-bleed images, split columns, and type-heavy layouts were also tested.

Some versions used bold colours; others went almost colourless. Each idea was pushed as far as it could go, then pulled back until it actually worked.

04: Final

In the end, two colours per letter and a consistent halftone texture were used for the whole book. Duotone was chosen deliberately over full colour to represent how the two vastly different fields can merge together in order to create something beautiful.

The deliberate choice to use a duotone effect rather than the original full-colour images unified wildly different historical artworks such as Rembrandt, Escher and da Vinci into a single visual register, making the book feel like a designed system rather than a collage.

Constraints, when chosen intentionally, become the strongest design tool.

05: Key Takeaways

03: Iterations