Chex Cereal Re-brand
When tasked with re-designing a packaging item of my choice, I thought about what I often think about: food. In this case, I thought about what’s important to me when I’m grocery shopping and what could make my grocery store experiences just slightly easier. Two things about me: 1) I love cereal, and 2) I’m allergic to corn. So that makes cereal difficult, because most of the delicious ones are corn-based. My cereal of choice is chocolate flavored Rice Chex, so I decided to design it as if I were going to market it towards a more ingredient-conscious audience.
Process and Ideation
I immediately knew that I wanted to go for a vintage feeling with this project. Chex has been around for a very long time and I wanted to convey the feeling of reliability and stability.
In my sketches, I was experimenting with different phrases, such as “simple & sweet” and also different ways of organizing my information. Rice Chex is corn and gluten free, and has 100% real cocoa, so I wanted those to be prominent details without taking over the design completely.
Starting with the front of the box, I made three drafts from my sketches. I played around with a checkerboard effect that I had seen in my moodboard research because it feels very solidified in the era I wanted to emulate.
For my first draft of the back and side, I pivoted to a different typeface than what was on the front. Futura feels like such a timeless typeface that pairs with vintage work or something more modern.
Final Design and Mockup
My final design on a cereal box mockup can be seen below. I ended up keeping the checkerboard but adding a halftone effect to it for a fun retro twist. The cereal bowl on the back got an illustration re-vamp that matches the rest of the box nicely.
Overall, I’m very happy with this package design. It was exciting to re-brand something so familiar to me in a bit of a different way. I learned a lot about formatting type on an object for this and found that I really enjoyed it.