No doubt it’s the absolute last thing on your mind right now, but the prospect of a cup of quality hot chocolate close at hand in your favorite mug is going to seem like heaven in a few months time. It’s a daydream enticingly conveyed in the label for Dick Taylor Peppermint Drinking Chocolate from Eureka, Calif.’s Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate. Coming as it does from a company that approaches chocolate making with the same careful craftsmanship and attention to detail that goes into hand making furniture – this is what founders Dustin Taylor and Adam Dick did before taming the cacao bean, after all – you’d expect nothing less than letterpress labeling, which is fortunate because that’s what we get here.
Most of the label was printed and die cut (more on that later) by Just My Type Letterpress before the red product lettering was added on the chocolate company’s own C&P 10″-x-15″ press. Once finished, the labels are then applied to a kraft stand-up box pouch.
As with most of the Dick Taylor branding, Dustin Taylor’s brother, Garrett, illustrated and designed this label, too. From the very first glance it’s clear that what is being sold here isn’t just a quality drinking chocolate, but also an idea. If you’ve never sampled the product before, what’s going to get you to pick up this packet is the cozy, idyllic scene on the package. However dark the trees and however cold the snow, we are warmed throughout by this very nostalgic rendering of a little cabin in the woods, complete with smoke escaping the chimney. (This is a quality Garrett Taylor brings to his illustration work at beloved animation studio Pixar.) The piece de resistance: the way the branches and very tip of the tallest tree are die cut to stand out from the rest of the label!
