Hotel Chocolat chose to launch a new design for its Christmas range and came to Herbert Walkers to realise the chosen concept in print for both the ‘Classic’ and ‘Winter Puddings’ collections across its ‘H-Box’, ‘Sleekster’ and ‘Luxe’ formats.

The design for both collections features a multi-dimensional foil snowflake, with a silver snowflake on a white box for the Winter Puddings variants and a red snowflake on a red substrate for the Classic variants. The design also includes an embossed Hotel Chocolat logo. The project included printing, cutting, creasing and gluing of the packs, ready for Hotel Chocolat’s automated packaging lines.

The key challenge for delivering the design as a finished pack was to achieve the luxury appearance of a holographic snowflake without the high costs associated with holographic foils.

To achieve this, we used textured dies, custom-cut and CNC engraved in-house by the Herbert Walkers team, to replicate holographic foils using standard foils. The result is packs that delivers a high-impact, luxury experience, while remaining within the commercial parameters required for the client’s pricing strategy.

The approach developed by Herbert Walkers for the Christmas packs was so successful that the use of standard foils with textured dies to replicate a holographic finish was rolled out to other products in the Hotel Chocolat Christmas range.