The 10 Best Chocolate Gifts for Your Valentine

Design agencies have developed a major sweet tooth for packaging.

The once humble chocolate bar has become the latest canvas for creatives to experiment with unexpected concepts and show off their design chops.

Since packaging actually has a real impact on how we perceive taste, these 10 examples of chocolate brands must be absolutely sweet and delicious. Check them all out below:

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

1. Chocolate-Paint

Japanese designer Nendo took inspiration from childhood to craft these edible paint tubes for Seibu Department Store. The chocolate tubes are each filled with a unique flavored syrup and come packaged in a box styled after oil paint sets. And don’t worry about messy fingers — Nendo added minimal paper labels you can hold onto while you indulge.

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

2. Fruene

Chocolate seems like a sweet way to honor the brave female pioneers of the world’s northernmost inhabited area — Svalbard, Norway. Norwegian graphic design firm Tank Design Tromsø worked closely with the Svalbard Museum and the Longyearbyen cafe (which happens to be the world’s northernmost chocolate producer) to create these unique chocolate bar designs.

Blending vintage images of women fishing, hunting, and trapping (all of which are traditionally male-dominated activities in Svalbard), with bold typography, the wrappers put the stories font and center. After all, the brand’s name — Fruene — literally translates to “ladies.”

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

3. Chocolates with Attitude

“The Hero”, “The Seducer”, “The Innocent” — no, these aren’t characters in an epic drama.. They’re chocolates designed by Danish creative agency Bessermachen. The firm’s Chocolates with Attitude box was developed as a way to showcase different personalities in packaging design, with a different chocolate treat cast as each core archetype. Each of the 12 individual packages within the box are an exercise in how different color schemes and typography can truly define the identity of a brand.

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

4. Lapp & Fao

What’s better than curling up with a good book? Eating a chocolate book, of course. German designers at Studio Chapeaux modeled these Lapp & Fao chocolate bar wrappers after old-fashioned travel journals, featuring custom illustrations reminiscent of Charles Darwin’s specimen sketches. Each “book” features a volume number on the spine and is meant to feel like a “delicious memento” of Lapp & Fao’s travels.

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

5. Chocolate Research Facility

Some design agencies would balk at the idea of designing individual packaging for over 100 different varieties of chocolate, but Singapore-based Asylum rose to the challenge. In a year-long project, the team created a collection of eclectic chocolate bar designs for Chocolate Research Facility that are perfectly cohesive in their eccentricity. Using bold graphics, bright patterns, and very limited text, no two flavors’ packing look alike.

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

6. Filter Chocolate

Tasked with creating an Indian-inspired concept for retailer Filter, Mumbai-based Alok Nanda & Company took a decidedly alternative approach. This monochromatic packaging design is a departure from the modern, colorful wrappers dominating the chocolate world and from what was expected. “We decided to do away with the kitsch and colours generally associated with India,” the designer explained. To keep the desaturated look central to India, the designer retained Indian motifs.

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

7. Alice Chocolate

Sometimes great things come in small packages. With sliding packaging inspired by a matchbox, Alice Chocolate was created and designed by Swiss branding consultants Michael Felber and Steven Mark Klein after they noticed a lack of real Swiss chocolate brands on the market. The package features a classic 18th-century style silhouette and modern sans-serif typography, centered on a white background to minimize distraction. The founders believe that they have something truly iconic on their hands with Alice.

In the brand introduction, it says,”If there was a list of the 100 classic brand icons: Chanel No 5, Patek Philippe Calatrava, Hermès Kelly Bag… the goal is to become the chocolate on that mythical list.”

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

8. Dallmayr

Combining tradition and modernity, German agency Factor Product designed this envelope-inspired branding and packaging for Dallmayr, a delicatessen franchise in Europe. The client wanted packaging that would signal to consumers that they were holding a high-quality, high-class chocolate bar in their hand, and the Munich based designers definitely delivered; each structured paper envelope is sealed with a branded Dallmayr sticker, and features detailed illustrations unique to each flavor.

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

9. Melt

Here’s a crazy idea: Why not feature chocolate on the chocolate bar label? JJAAKK Design did just that with their packaging concept for the fictional Melt chocolate company. Using raised ink, the team at JJAAKK covered the wrappers in an artful and realistic webbing of melted chocolate illustrations, “providing a tantalizing glimpse at the wonderfulness contained within.”

The 10 Best Chocolate Treats for Your Valentine

10. Moonstruck

When Oregon-based Moonstruck Chocolate decided to start exploring national distribution for their premium single-origin chocolates, it came to brand design firm Sandstrom Partners for a look that would set the brand apart. The client wanted packaging that would “capture the imagination” and evoke an emotional response in chocolate lovers. The result was this enchanting series of wrappers, which use hand-cut paper illustration, embossing techniques, and multiple paper finishes for an elevated, “multi-sensory” experience.