Drawing the Line

Literally.

Java Factory has a pretty specific visual language. All of our packaging is illustrated, and the illustrations are part of what makes the brand feel like Java Factory.

Then we finalized a collaboration agreement with Good Humor and needed to work on the product packaging.

Good Humor has its own visual language, and when you're working with a brand that has been around for generations, there are certain things you don't just casually change.

They very much wanted the Chocolate Éclair product represented as a photo, the way it appears on Good Humor packaging. We wanted to keep the illustrated style that customers already recognize as Java Factory. There was significant pushback on an all-illustration approach from Good Humor, so we tried a few versions using the actual photo, but it wasn't working and mostly didn't feel cohesive with the Java branding. Our design team, the Good Humor licensing team, and the Good Humor brand team all got on a call to try to work out a compromise.

The solution was to illustrate the Chocolate Éclair itself in the Java Factory style while keeping the Good Humor logo exactly as it is. We had to work through what could be reinterpreted in our style, what needed to remain true to Good Humor, and where the two visual systems could meet.

The final package is a pretty good example of the compromise. The Chocolate Éclair is drawn. It looks like a Java Factory illustration. But the Good Humor logo remains unchanged. Both brands had to move the line a little.

When working with licensed products, you're not just putting another name on your package. You're bringing another brand's history, rules and expectations into your world, and the best examples bring those worlds together seamlessly.

Sometimes the real work is in the flavor. Not this time. Compared with the packaging challenge, Chocolate Éclair was relatively straightforward.

Chocolate and vanilla got us started, but that alone would have made chocolate-vanilla coffee. We needed the baked character of the cookie crumble and a touch of tang so the vanilla read as ice cream instead of sweet cream.

Those details mattered, but they were familiar territory. We had worked with those kinds of notes before and knew how they behaved in coffee. The challenge was not discovering the flavor in real time. It was making sure the finished cup clearly read as a chocolate cookie-crumble ice cream bar, not just chocolate-and-vanilla coffee.

In this case, the real challenge was in figuring out how two brands can occupy the same space.

MISSION STATUS: Collaborating Beyond Flavor
Flavors Released: 15 / 52
Ice Cream Truck Season 2: 7 of 9 weeks
Mondays Missed: 0
World Record Status: On track