Dāt creates bite-sized cakes sweetened naturally with one of the world’s oldest traveling fruits, dates. Each flavor of Dat transports the consumer to a different global destination.

DISCIPLINES

Brand Identity
Marketing
Packaging Design
Illustration

TIMELINE

Winter 2026
10 weeks

GRAPHICS TEAM

Samantha Heintz
Aviv Kesar
Halina Herc

PACKAGING TEAM

Tyler Innes
Marissa Johnston
Eddie Chow
Izack Padilla

Green and black box of Dāṭ pistachio chocolate date cakes with pistachios and chocolate pieces in front. 
COLOR
PROJECT BRIEF

Paper packaging is sustainable and recyclable. To increase its use, this year's Paperboard Packaging Council Design Challenge asks students to design an influencer PR box for an original luxury confectionery brand that holds the retail product inside.

CONCEPT

In analyzing gaps in the market, my team landed on chocolate covered date cakes as our product. Dates, one of the oldest traveling fruits, inspired us to transform their natural sweetness into a guilt free treat, perfect for the on-the-go consumer. We built a travel-inspired experience complete with postcards, a passport, and a PR package shaped like a luxurious travel bag. Anchored by the slogan “Save the Date,” the brand invites influencers to share the experience together, blending the language of travel with a playful nod to connection.

Process

IDEATION
STAMPS

Gathered moodboard inspiration for structural aspects, illustrations, and other concepts that we wanted to include in both the PR package and the retail package.

Collage of various packaging, gift boxes, shopping bags, and promotional materials, including a leather handbag, a person opening a box of cupcakes, coffee packaging, a calendar, and assorted gift and product boxes.

My team and I explored various color palettes, but ultimately landed on active, which fit our on-the-go traveler persona. We also knew we wanted to go bright to stand out against competitors.

Color palette with three rows labeled Natural, Active, and Vintage, each featuring five circles of different colors. 
TYPE
Colorful words 'DÁT' in various fonts and sizes, arranged in rows and columns with different colors including purple, yellow, red, teal, black, gray, and orange.

Final Graphics

Exploring monogram logotypes inspired by the bold legacy of houses like YSL. Exploration includes strong wordmarks alongside high contrast serif treatments with ligatures to evoke a sense of luxury and refinement.

FINAL BRANDING

We made the final logo more smooth and fluid to better match the product’s richness. Lowercase letterforms bring a warmth to the mark, while the ligatures give a nod to the elegant typefaces that shaped our early design direction. After some tweaking of the active color palette to ensure that the different flavor colors matched in saturation, we landed on the Dat color palette.

A color palette featuring five shades: Bittersweet Cacao, Toasted Almond, Sunlit Lemon Curd, Pistachio Grove, and Coconut Mist, with the word 'dat' in large font below.

Illustrations

Location stamps drawn from the bold aesthetic of passport stamps, evoking discovery and destination. Ingredient illustrations had that same stamp-like quality.

Four travel stamps for France, Dubai, Bali, and Italy, each with distinctive shapes and colors.
Colorful hand-drawn illustrations of coffee beans, herbs, and citrus fruits on a black background.
Diagram showing the process of designing an envelope, from shape exploration and refinement to final design, including steps like shape refinement, shape exploration, mechanism exploration, interior revamp, and final design.

Retail Package Final Dielines

Color-coded packaging designs for four different chocolate date cake flavors: blue, green, orange, and yellow, with illustrations of ingredients on each package.

Retail Product Photography

Stack of four colorful boxes of dark chocolate date cakes, arranged in a pyramid, with each box in green, blue, orange, and yellow, on a plain white background.

Prototypes

Black and orange box of almond chocolate date cakes placed on a white surface, with a white note card beneath it that reads "Save the Date" and mentions Provence, France.
Because of winn-dixie

For next time…

summit society 
TAKEAWAYS

This project has been one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences during my time at Cal Poly. Collaborating with Industrial Technology and Packaging majors offered valuable insights and allowed me to learn from their expertise. This project required adaptability and responsiveness, as dielines were continuously updated based on feedback from our biweekly professor meetings. This experience showed me how to navigate evolving design constraints while maintaining a cohesive creative solution.

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