How Hattie Stewart and Nata Concept Store applied their unique style to design creative products for Toblerone

Toblerone has just launched a new marketplace – and it’s all about making space for creativity. With experimentation at the heart of any exciting creative endeavour, the brand is giving creatives the chance to do just that; by dreaming up products for its new gift shop in a project titled Toblerone’s You’re Golden Collabs. Launching as part of Toblerone’s wider You’re Golden campaign for the new Golden chocolate bar, the marketplace is encouraging audiences to express their appreciation for those they care about, celebrating creativity through mindful gifting. To inspire appreciation, Toblerone would need some unique products, which is where celebrated illustrator Hattie Stewart and candlemaking and homeware studio Nata Concept Store enter the picture.

Challenged by Toblerone to come up with products that spark thoughtfulness, Hattie and Nata Concept Store have produced a limited edition print and candle, respectively. For some context, Toblerone’s You’re Golden Collabs was developed to provide creatives with a platform to do more of the things they love, at scale. To find out more about each drop, we paid a visit to each creator’s studio to discover their process, from initial idea to final product.

On first hearing the brief from Toblerone, Hattie Stewart immediately struck gold with an idea. “Straight away I kind of leant into the You’re Golden tagline – it already links so perfectly to my sun character and then the sun rays perfectly reflected the iconic Toblerone shape.” She began creating initial sketches for a “natural, playful outdoor scene” with the inclusion of a heart character. The You’re My Sunshine print aimed to visualise a “balance of love & gratitude – the key component of the [Toblerone] project”. For readers not yet familiar with Hattie’s work (which ranges from sticker designs to photography doodling), joyful and tongue-in-cheek is the key aesthetic; Hattie wanted her print to feel the same, with “seamless” results.

The Toblerone campaign similarly inspired Nata Concept Store, but as design aficionados, the studio’s first ideas played with form. “It became very clear to the both of us that the symbol of the triangle would be the star of the show,” Nata founders Anna and Tatiana explain. Paying tribute to the iconic triangle shape, the duo came up with a Zig & Zag candle that slots together “to illustrate the message of togetherness and connection”. As candlemakers with an unconventional aesthetic (“different to your everyday classic Vanilla jar candle”), Nata wanted to “match” the strong identity of Toblerone with playfulness and a strong geometric shape.

As for how to bring these ideas to life, the process looked different for each creator. For Hattie: “I aaaalways tidy up my studio before I begin – the physical/literal metaphor for tidying and clearing out my mind.” Next, with her golden sun idea in mind, she turned to the back of her notebook to make sketches and notes, which, unlike the cleanliness of her online sketchbooks, “is literal chaos…”, she admits. To research her concept further, Hattie turned to her previous book From One Universe To Another Book to “finesse the layout concept and which characters to include” – also looking through her huge collection of ephemera and “good ol’ Tumblr” for references. Hattie drew up these rough ideas on Procreate before using Photoshop “to work out the layers, colour and gradients.” “A simple three-step process this time around.”

The final You’re My Sunshine gift is made using Riso – for its accessibility, texture, and because it allowed Hattie to use a “gold spot colour” for the sun, “which was a nice tie in”.

Meanwhile, working from a small studio in London, Nata Concept Store has a varied process, always beginning with research. For Toblerone’s You’re Golden Collabs, this meant looking into things like the “Golden Triangle” – a classic compositional rule used in painting. Nata also looked through books and online for artists who used the triangle form – like Picasso’s cubist noses and Gerrit Rietvielt ZigZag Chair. To visualise and test out the idea in real life, the duo actually utilise 3D and 3D printing. “Getting the 3D printed is our chance to see if our real-life design works as a three-dimensional product,” the duo explain. During this developmental phase, Nata tested out if the Toblerone design would work as a burnable candle (“candle making is a bit like a weird science experiment”), finally landing on the iconic golden Toblerone colour and zigzag form. Made using a custom mould, the limited edition candle has been hand-poured using soy wax in Nata’s very studio.

Hattie Stewart’s You’re My Sunshine print is available for purchase on the Toblerone gift shop, with Nata Concept’s ZigZag candle available here. On Nata’s experience working with Toblerone, the duo explain that not only did it allow the studio to “think outside of the box”, the final product is “the perfect representation of a gift”. “We want to encourage whoever buys or gifts this candle to use it the versatile way,” its founders state. “Whether you give one piece of the candle away or gift both to yourself, the store hopes lighting it creates “a special ritual”. Equally, after getting the chance to play around with new processes, Hattie hopes her “golden sun” print will not only express the joy of gift giving, “but will (hopefully!) brighten up [someone’s] home”. Discover more about these brilliant products here, at the Toblerone site.