Belief Machines is injecting a lot more fun and flavor into supermarket aisles with their colorful work for Riddim, a Bajan snack company that sells a variety of enticing popcorns and plantain chips.
Their design is simple, but attention-grabbing, with punchy two-color palettes, fun product illustrations, and smart sans serif layouts. There’s a nice contrast to the whole system, and the boldness of the type adds an edge and all ages appeal to the soft nostalgia of the anthropomorphized snacks.
Riddim is on a mission to shake up the way we snack. Bringing the laid back beat of Barbados with flavorsome and crucially ‘allergen free’ plantain chips and hand popped popcorn. Riddim exists to bring bold flavours and heritage rich product stories to a market overrun with a sea of sameness in flavours and formats, that traditionally have followed the exact same rules with design and packaging.
Jared Spencer, founder of Riddim briefed Belief Machines to build an authentic yet disruptive brand identity and packaging concept that could capture the essence of West Indies and Bajan culture through a lens of newness, dismantling traditional westernised tropes of the Caribbean’ that pays homage to the heritage and stories of the brands big flavours.
Focused on providing a point of difference on shelf that was guaranteed to get cut through and grab consumers’ attention.
Authentic cultural representation through design, packaging and product on shelf is vital as Black founded food and drink brands currently make up less than 5% of the average supermarket shelf. With only 0.24% of funding making its way to black founders in the UK in the last decade.Riddim wants to build a brand that can sit outside of ‘world food’ and ‘free from’ aisles and sit in the mainstream with a proposition that has been carefully created to appeal to the West Indies diaspora and UK audiences alike.
We began this process by looking at what our design framework would be composed of, to create a totally unique, hand crafted identity.
We took inspiration from the hand painted beach shacks of Barbados, leaning into the informality and intimacy of these individual and highly expressive motifs of the island. Adopting the ‘Bajan way’ we created a design system that resists formality, misbehaves and flexes as needed, to create a sense of ease and relaxed joy which was a characteristic of the Bajan attitude that Jared really wanted to represent visually.
We selected a colour palette that also leaned into the colour of the shacks whilst bringing to life the flavours of each product. Choosing to work with a two colour system for each product to deliver something that was bold and attention grabbing.
Working with illustrator Lucy Letherland we created two characters to express the personality of the Riddim founder Jared Spencer, to bring his voice to the brand and pack design. The characters bring a lighthearted whilst vaguely nostalgic design element to the packs, playing on the romance of snacks of your childhood. Jared had built the brand on his own experiences as a child with allergies who struggled to find delicious treats to enjoy on his birthday, and creating 2 icons that will be present across the wider branding and design identity.
Our copy and tag line ‘Issa Bajan ting’ also authentically weave in language and colloquialisms of Barbados. Written by Jared and his family, it speaks in a friendly, familiar tone. It talks to the story of each product and the memories, feeling it wants to evoke using wording and phrases that are uniquely West Indian but that are also known in British culture to make the brand inclusive and welcoming to all.
After all, issa Bajan ting.
