Anthony's Naturals

The Premise: Wellness has been overcomplicated. The brand thesis is the opposite: single ingredients, sourced from Ghana and global food traditions, with nothing added to hide the taste. Named after the founder’s late father—a WHO public-health professional—the brand is his philosophy made into products.

Personalized Branding: I wanted the name to carry the brand instead of sitting next to a floating logo. The bee brand mark acts as the apostrophe because the founder’s grandfather was a beekeeper. Putting the bee into the punctuation turns the reference into a subtle detail; a traditional logo would have pulled attention away from the name and made it feel corporate.

Rejecting Minimalism: Most wellness brands default to green, earth tones, and minimalism. I decided against that. Minimalism works for products the customer already understands. For unfamiliar ingredients, minimalism would have been two barriers stacked on top of each other: unfamiliar product, plus nothing visually warm to reach for.

The Front of the Bag: The packaging had to do the first half of the introduction. Each bag uses high-saturation brand colors and a photorealistic image of the ingredient. The benefits (Debloat support, digestive support, etc.) sit to the right of the image—a placement designed for how wellness is discovered on TikTok and Instagram, where benefits need to be legible in a two-second scroll.

Controlling the Narrative: We scrapped a front-facing “Sourced from Ghana” flag. Leaning into the origin on the front risked making the product feel unfamiliar and foreign at the same time—one barrier too many for a shelf shopper. The Ghana story belongs in the brand, not as the primary selling point.

The Introduction: The back of every bag has a section titled “Meet Baobab” or “Meet Moringa.” The brand has to do the work of introducing the product rather than assuming the customer already knows what it is.

Actionable Usage: Every bag includes three to four ways to use the product (a daily smoothie, a baking swap, etc.). It’s a hard ask to hand someone an unfamiliar ingredient and expect them to figure out what to do with it. Giving them usage ideas removes the last phase of friction between buying the product and actually using it.

Real-World Validation: During retail demos at Jungle Jim’s, customers constantly asked what the products were. Because the packaging was designed to anticipate this friction, the founder could point directly to the usage ideas on the back of the bag, which demonstrably increased the rate of sale on the floor.

Factory-Ready Output: I worked directly with overseas manufacturers and their factory dielines, exporting each file out of Illustrator with proper print specs, bleed, CMYK profiles, and material constraints. A package that doesn’t print correctly is a package that can’t ship, making production work as critical as the identity.

Material Negotiation: I advocated for biodegradable packaging because a nature-respecting brand shouldn’t ship in plastic. The founder pushed back, not wanting to commit to a premium substrate before market testing. We landed on recyclable, matte-finish BOPP. It taught me that a brand designer’s job is partly to advocate for the ideal and partly to know when to meet the business where it is.

Warm E-Commerce: Minimal-ingredient wellness sites usually go clinical white to look “premium.” A cold, sterile site for baobab powder would have put a second barrier in front of the customer. Built on WordPress with Elementor Pro, the site uses warm cream backgrounds and domestic kitchen photography to make the product approachable and hospitable.