Salted Herring takes chocolate to another level with launch of new Whittaker’s website
If you have a weakness for chocolate you’d best stay away from the new Whittaker’s website, created by Salted Herring in collaboration with Assignment Group. Because the world’s first website made from chocolate may leave you running to the shops for a fix.
So how did Salted Herring take their concept – a site carefully crafted out of chocolate by Brian and Andrew Whittaker – from a bright idea to a beautifully executed result? First they had to familiarise themselves with the technical challenges of designing chocolate with the help of the Whittaker’s experts. Their “web block” had to fit to standard block size and weight specifications, so it took a lengthy and detailed design process to perfect it. The finished block contains all the website interface elements: from main section headers to navigation buttons and even social media icons.
The block design was converted into a 3D model and sent off tospecialist chocolate mould makers based in the Netherlands. And withthese moulds, Whittaker’s hand-produced 20 blocks made from 72% DarkGhana chocolate.
The blocks were then broken into individual pieces, photographed andintegrated into the design of the website. You can watch the wholeprocess in the “The making of” video on the Whittaker’s homepage.
If you haven’t developed a chocolate craving just reading about thesite, wait until you see the final product. Every detail has beenthought through, from the smooth chocolate background to the audioeffects used throughout the site as you interact with chocolate buttons- it sounds like the cracking noise when you snap off a row ofchocolate from a block.
The online response is already excellent, with the new site reachingthe previous site’s monthly average in only five days. Users are alsospending more than six minutes on the site on average.
Facebook and Twitter comments fall somewhere between “I wanted to lickthe screen”, “I have just nibbled my laptop” and “I’d eat the SHAREbutton first so no-one could find it”. One Facebook commenter wants toknow if the chocolate web buttons will be available for sale as alimited edition. But overwhelmingly, the main response to the websitehas been: “I’m off to buy chocolate”. You can’t get a much betterresult than that.
7 Comments
Nice idea. However, here’s some advice. Take it or leave it…
Watching it with completely fresh eyes, the ‘making of’ clip is far too laboured for such a simple idea. I’d trim the shit out of it before sending it to the gong shows. Jurors have to sit through 500 of these in a day.
i’m not crazy about the ‘idea’ but shit it made me want chocolate.
Regards
Devo
Stop press did point out that Alt Group already did the choc keys thing. Whittakers just did it better, but still, it has been done before.
Yep 5.49 said it. Nice idea. Really nice.
The first half of the video drags painfully. The second half – better.
Alt Group isn’t the first to do chocolate keyboards. I’ve seen it before. Haven’t seen a custom designed chocolate interface before though. Good on them!
great idea , great execution
Must have been hard work. Not even enough time to research the correct twitter logo.
Google. Copy. Paste.