Fair & Square

We were engaged to relaunch Ancient Provisions whose brand had centered around the health benefits of its novel main ingredient called green banana flour. This ingredient-driven brand had limited appeal with the company’s target audience of children and health-conscious parents. Over a thorough 16-month process, we re-conceptualized Ancient Provisions from the ground up to create Fair & Square. We sought to capture white space between the extremes of juvenile, guilty pleasures like Cheez-Its and wholesome, staple brands, like Simple Mills. To do so, our approach centered around repositioning the brand’s nutritional benefits as part of an inclusive message of making delicious snacks available to everyone and the design of an immersive brand universe that leaned into delightfulness and whimsy, never breaking character on its mission to bring joy and fun to healthy snacking.

Fair & Square’s brand strategy centers around its essence which can be distilled in the phrase “Delightful Satisfaction.” Delightful Satisfaction captures the joy and excitement of enjoying delicious and fun snacks together with long-term benefits promoting healthy and settled stomachs with the brand’s gut-friendly ingredients. In order to bring this essence to life, we developed a brand personality meant to be entertaining, whimsical, endlessly optimistic, and appealing to individuals ranging from young children to health-conscious middle-aged adults.

The brand name, Fair & Square, captures the brand’s inclusive message of offering snacks for everyone as part of a pun playing off of the square shape of its products. The brand’s voice blends a cheerful, optimistic tone with a series of limericks conceptualized as a sophisticated take on the language one would expect from a children’s book. This rich and imaginative language aims to bring smiles to faces and make the benefits of healthy eating entertaining and joyful, rather than cold and medicinal.

Fair & Square’s visual language takes cues from references ranging from whimsical, vintage circus advertisements; the preppy, charming, and sophisticated films and title sequences of Wes Anderson; and the cute, approachable, and expressive character of children’s books like The Bernstein Bears and Madeline.

The brand’s logo is designed to fit within illustrated scenes as one would expect from the title of a children’s book or movie poster. This comes to life thorough a hand-drawn version of Futura framed with an outline and shadow. The logo includes an ampersand set within a cracker-shaped square, which is used independently as the brand’s primary icon.

The brand’s color palette builds off of the dominant color story of each illustrated scene, employing a mix of saturated primary colors and pastels. The brand’s type system combines a series of Futura fonts, together with more expressive secondary fonts like Tilda and Archer. Onion Mill is used for body copy and signage because of its hand-drawn appearance, in order to offer cohesion between the brand identity and illustrations. Compositions carefully combine these fonts into a diverse set of decorative seals to be used throughout brand applications. Finally, a series of patterns composed of squares add a memorable framing to various layouts.

Illustrations are central to Fair & Square’s branding and packaging experience. We collaborated with the acclaimed illustrator Max Dalton who created absolute magic with each and every detail. Together, we developed a visual style brimming fun and sophistication, imagining a set of delightful scenes and a diverse cast of characters used throughout the company’s brand identity and packaging. Foremost among these characters is the brand’s mascot, Andy, an adventurous cracker found in unique disguises hidden within each Fair & Square box a la Where’s Waldo. In addition, we created a large set of illustrated signs to be used both in packaging and brand collateral, bridging the divide between identity and packaging.

Our goal with Fair & Square’s packaging was to make their healthy snack as exciting and compelling as even most sugar-rich junk food alternatives. Our approach centered around building immersive, illustrated worlds in order to capture attention on shelf and invite consumers to pick the products up and spend more time discovering details about the brand. This meant being thoughtful about each and every detail with an ambitious strategy filled with moments of delight.

Each flavor is set within a unique, happy location including a beach, campground, residential neighborhood, and theme park complete with its own set of dozens of characters and countless details. Building off of this immersive experience, each illustrated scene wraps fully around every side of each box, inviting consumers to uncover countless charming moments while enjoying their snacks. Furthermore, all brand messaging is included within the context of illustrated signs that fit naturally and harmoniously in each scene.

As a brand with multiple flavors each with a differentiated illustration, we created a consistent hierarchy of information in order to bring cohesion across the line on shelf. In addition, we prioritized clarity of communication by paring back brand messaging to the essentials. The front of pack prominently displays flavor information and 3 nutritional callouts. The back of pack, includes a large billboard within each scene — a meta advertisement of sorts — that includes a poem to describe the brand’s story and mission.

Nearly every competing cracker brand includes images of its products and flavors on the front of pack. Instead, we included illustrated crackers throughout each pack, along with creative illustrations of the main flavors of cheddar, sea salt, honey, and cinnamon sugar. Finally, in addition to boxes, Fair & Square is also sold in individual bags. We isolated the most exciting scene from each box to apply to this smaller, yet perhaps even cuter format.
We invite you to take a moment and zoom in on the details of every package and hope doing so brings a smile to your face.

Raphael and Truffl created magic for us. They designed not just a brand, but an entire world that blew me away and continues to do so every day. Raphael has the touch, the thoughtfulness, and the creative fortitude to meet you where you are as a founder. He and his team spent countless months considering each and every detail like an extension of our team and we felt like their only client because of it. I encourage you to not only work with Truffl but also to give them the freedom to create -- because that's where the magic happens.

Fair & Square recreates your favorite childhood snacks so they can be enjoyed by everyone, starting with a collection of delightfully satisfying crackers that are allergen-free, plant-based, and gut-friendly.