← middl-men by Nonna

Frozen food spends its life apologising
for not being fresh.

these are picked at their peak and frozen right there, so nothing is lost on the way to you

So we stopped apologising.

And gave it a grandmother instead.

We had the name before anything else.

Then we worked out
whose it was.

you can smell when it's ready. don't set a timer for it

We had the name before anything else.

Then we worked out
whose it was.

you can smell when it's ready. don't set a timer for it

We had the name before anything else.

Then we worked out
whose it was.

you can smell when it's ready. don't set a timer for it

Every other pack in that aisle has a personality.
We gave ours an actual person.

you can smell when it's ready. don't set a timer for it

We decided this before we'd drawn anything.

She never appears.

No face, no photo, no illustration

I

The Nourisher

The first one's about feeding people properly, so we put it where you'd see it every week.

have the bigger piece. i've eaten

II

The Explorer

The second one goes off-recipe. It got the flavours nobody else in the freezer was carrying.

i tried it with the chilli. it works

III

The Keeper

The third one writes things down so they don't get lost. We gave it the format that keeps.

write the date on the lid. you think you'll remember

IV

The Host

The fourth one always lays one more place than there are people. It got the things you put out at no notice.

make double. someone always turns up

They gave us room to do it our way,
and we used every bit of it.

if you're not sure, give it another ten minutes. it won't mind

Then we showed it to them.

The system

The tile is the whole system.

01 / 03

The system

The tile is the whole system.
Pattern and colour tell you what's in the pack,

02 / 03

The system

The tile is the whole system.
Pattern and colour tell you what's in the pack,
and no two tiles are the same.

There's a reason behind every colour on this range, and not one of them is that it looked nice.

03 / 03

We went into every category
on purpose,
to stand out in all of them.

Same freezer, same shelf, same size of pack.
And still nothing in there looked like it.

don't crowd the pan. they steam instead of browning

The client saw what we saw.

They loved it, and they bought it.

And then, somewhere between the sale and the shelf,
it just stopped.

Sold, and never opened.

Completed · Unreleased · 2025
January – February 2025

don't keep these for an occasion. have them tonight