Center’s identity for Riff, chef Daniel Humm’s new meal kits, turns the dinner box into a cookery lesson.
Ready-to-cook dinners are often seen as the bottom rung of dining. Sure, they’re super-convenient, cheaper than Deliveroo, and taste pretty good these days. But they’re still seen as pretty basic, and the packaging generally matches those expectations.
There are, however, exceptions. And Riff is one worth talking about. This new range is headed up by Swiss-born chef Daniel Humm, who’s spent the last two decades redefining fine dining at Eleven Madison Park in New York, a three-Michelin-star restaurant reimagined as a plant-forward dining destination.
Daniel isn’t the name you think of when it comes to convenience food. But his first line is built around ingredients you can throw into a single pan, cook in about 20 minutes, for an affordable price. And he turned to New York studio Center to create the brand end to end: from identity and colour to type, art direction, voice, and packaging.
So how do you put a world-class chef’s philosophy into a cardboard box, exactly?
Squaring the circle
Center’s strategic starting point is to challenge the notion that you can have convenience or you can have quality, but you can’t have both. Because with rising food prices pushing more people back into their own kitchens, and economic conditions reducing the time they can spend there, the boxed dinner has started to come back into popularity
Riff aims to meet the square the circle and provide food that’s both fast and flavoursome. The box alone makes a complete dinner. But here’s an interesting twist. Each pack also highlights what a squeeze of lemon, a handful of cherry tomatoes, a sprig of basil or some protein would add to the dish, as well as explaining what each specifically contributes (sweetness, acidity, herbal lift and so on).
It’s a clever idea that reveals why the brand name was chosen. In music, a riff is something you explore, improvise on and make your own. As both a noun and a verb, ‘Riff’ describes exactly what the product offers, alongside the brand concept of “Crave what you cook.”
Logo, colour and typography
Visually, the wordmark is the first thing you notice, simply because it’s so large on the front of every box. This heavy, chunky type sits on a curved baseline that you might read as a plate, a pan or a table. The dot over the “i” appears in the centre as a kind of garnish, and changes colour to reflect each of the different flavours.
Colour, indeed, plays an important part in this identity. The hero hues of Tablecloth White and Riff Blue are complemented by a kaleidoscope of colours inspired by educational texts, including Chilli Red, Leafy Green, Butter Yellow, Boiling Blue, Radicchio Pink and Nutmeg Brown, plus a tertiary set that includes Noodle Yellow, Rice Purple and Orange Orange. Center says the colour system meets accessibility standards across all 12 shades.
Each flavour gets its own coloured plate as the hero image: a green bowl for Garlic Lemon Rotini, blue for Sesame Ginger Noodles, red for Spicy Tomato Rigatoni. The flavour name curves around the base of the plate, making it quick and easy to read.
Typography is built around three faces. Prisma Text Low is a friendly, highly legible workhorse. Society, a high-contrast serif, brings vintage cookbook charm and some quirky ligatures that nod to the 70s and 80s. Thirdly, ABC Stefan Simple, a handwritten typeface, is used by the brand mascot, Dan the Pan.
Mascot and TOV
Were you expecting the packaging to carry the face of the famous chef behind it? Well, Center decided to go a different way. Instead, they created this cheery character who’s a kitchen sidekick rather than the head chef, and who speaks in short, handwritten lines set at jaunty angles.
Dan the Pan’s job is to enthuse you about cooking and encourage you to get on with it. On the back of the Spicy Tomato Rigatoni box, for instance, he brandishes a chicken drumstick and suggests you add protein, while offering tips such as adding lemon juice if it’s too spicy or chilli flakes if you want more kick.
That tone of voice runs right through the brand, and can also be seen in slogans such as “Boxed, but not boring” and “Maximum joy”. Center describes it as “today’s cookbook meets your favourite group text”. It’s not about lecturing people: vegetables are pushed hard, but there isn’t a single word about health. It’s all about flavour.
Packaging and photography
All of this comes together on the box itself. The front delivers the big logo and flavour-coded plate. The back explains the Riff concept, lists what’s in the box and lays out the recipe steps, with Dan underneath offering variations.
The top carries a QR code linking to Humm’s cooking videos, each with a curated soundtrack. And one full side is given over entirely to the riffs: large photographs of recommended fresh produce, each with a reason it earns its place.
The photography works hard too. The dinners on pack are deliberately “unstyled”: they look more like something a home cook would make than a food stylist: no airbrushed perfection here. The fresh produce, meanwhile, is shot as the hero: a single leaf or a slice of lemon, for instance, in high contrast with sharp shadows and water still on the skin.
The identity extends well beyond the box, too: to billboards reading “Riff for dinner”, point-of-sale in the produce aisle asking “What’s for dinner?” and some very nice merch, including branded measuring spoons and striped sports socks.
A boxed dinner brand that wants you to get better at cooking seems like a contradiction in terms, and whether Riff can get the message across to consumers is an open question. But one thing’s for sure: these designs are doing their damnedest to make sure it succeeds.
