Meet the Experts — Inside Grüns with creative director Blake Vallotton

SAN DIEGO, CA — By 2023, wellness had become hard to miss and even harder to keep up with. There were greens powders in tall glasses of water, creatine experienced a massive resurgence in popularity, electrolyte sachets in handbags and TikTok morning routines filmed with the intensity of short films. Everything promised optimisation. Everything wanted a place in the first hour of the day.

But the supplement aisle still had a problem. Much of it looked dutiful. Clinical. Worthy. Designed for the person you hoped you might become, not necessarily the person rushing out the door with a bag, a coffee and fourteen unread messages.
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Grüns took a different route.

The brand turned greens-powder, multivitamin and fibre stack into a daily gummy pack: portable, colourful and snack-coded. As it expanded into Grüns Adults, Grüns Kids, Nütrops, Immün and Jüced, the wider Ü Snacks system gave the business something most fast-growing wellness brands struggle to build: a recognisable visual architecture.

The “ü” became a family mark. Slightly smiley, instantly ownable and flexible enough to stretch across products without making everything feel like a forced line extension. The timing was useful. Barbie had shown how far a single visual world could travel across culture.

By 2026, Unilever had moved in, bringing Grüns into Unilever Wellbeing alongside Olly, SmartyPants, Nutrafol and Liquid I.V. What Unilever bought was a habit loop, a visual system and a brand that made compliance feel, improbably, like candy.

Which is where Blake Vallotton comes in.

Now creative director at Grüns, Vallotton leads the brand’s creative world from San Diego. Before joining the company, he spent nearly five years at Taco Bell, moving from designer to art director and working across campaign art direction, digital design, photo and video production, uniforms and large-scale brand experiences.

I asked Vallotton about standing out in CPG, the limits of AI creative, and how packaging should respond when GLP-1s are changing what, how and why people eat.

The supplement aisle is one of the hardest places to stand out. Talk us through what Grüns is doing differently at the design level.

Strong bold systems. All Ü Snacks products follow the same packaging layouts to create a recognizable system. All the brands use bold, distinctive duo-tone colors that are meant to stand out compared to our competitors. It's not overly complicated, but it works.

How much do you think the creative work contributed to Grüns' outcome with Unilever, and is that a conversation the industry has honestly enough?

Great question! I've seen this come up a lot on LinkedIn; you'll see a post like: "Brand X went from X to XXXX after they rebranded!" I think every field likes to equate their own work with the success.

I think creative is a big gear of the machine. But at Ü Snacks, we have a lot of big gears to make this machine run. Having said that, I am very proud of what my creative team has done.

We really push to have authentic and truly artistic creative: evolving the typical CPG aesthetics, avoiding AI photos for real human-made photography, and creating content that feels honest. We make a really quality product; the last thing I would want is to have our creative build distrust with customers. They may ask, "if you cut corners with creative, where else are you cutting corners?"

When you walk into a grocery store, what stops you?

When I am walking through the store, I try to notice what catches my eye, and why. I am such a sucker for great branding; I started making my own brands as young as 11 years old. So, I still just geek out on logos, fonts, colors… the whole thing.

Which CPG brand right now feels like it's operating on a completely different frequency than everything else and why?

I am trying not to say Liquid Death because everyone says that. But what I give them props for is building a brand around a theme. This has been done before but not to this extreme. And, while they use parody to pay homage, it has opened up brands like Vacation to use pastiche to pay homage. I feel like the Ü Snacks brands sit between parody and pastiche, using themes in a campy, kitschy way. So, I appreciate that they tested the waters for us.

When you're creatively stuck, where do you go?

To my thoughts. I think we all have enough inspiration and research in our minds; we constantly have content pushed at us. You just need to give your brain time to yap. I like to step away from the computer and riff off of small ideas until they become big ideas.

What's a direction in CPG design right now that everyone thinks is smart but you think is going to age badly?

AI creative. AI needs to be either so perfect that customers don't notice, or so accepted that people like that you use it. Right now, it's neither. I believe it hurts the trust of the customer when they see you cutting corners. And, it seems like the tides are changing away from large companies using AI creative because of the lack of ROI and poor public appeal. I'm excited to see the hype die down.

As GLP-1 changes what people eat, how must packaging design respond?

I think packaging is always supposed to meet people where they're at. I always like to tell myself when I'm creating, "Make this as if no one cares about your product." Because if you start there, you will design in a way to force people to care about you. Too many brands assume the customer will inherently care, so their packaging doesn't meet people where they're at. The same is true for a GLP-1 user or any other customer.

What are your 3 favourite spots to eat or grab coffee in San Diego?

Ooo! I'm new to the area, so I need to find deeper cuts. But for now, I love Fernside, Curryosity, and Part Time Lover.

Which other designers do you admire?

I like what The Young Jerks are doing!