Design Bridge And Partners Turns Leones Turin Sweet Factory Into A Willy Wonka World

Creative Boom: Design Bridge and Partners turns Leone's Turin sweet factory into a Willy Wonka world The 170-year-old Italian confectioner has opened a new visitor experience around its live production line, and the joy is how little of it is on a screen. You know the song. Only this isn't pure imagination; it's a real place in Turin you can walk through. Just don't get greedy and fall into the chocolate river. Yes, that's right. Dreams really do come true. Leone, one of Italy's oldest confectioners, has launched the Happiness Factory in Turin.

It's a working sweet factory you can walk through, has a founder cast as an eccentric dreamer, and a room called the Garden of Delights... Yes, you're going to think of Wonka. Of course you are. The difference is there's no golden ticket and no one's going to get sucked up a pipe. The new attraction is the work of Design Bridge and Partners, WPP's brand and design agency, which led the creative vision and experiential identity, with Studio Paolo Monzeglio designing the exhibition itself and Fo.LL.iA handling the interactive, multimedia and graphic elements of the whole thing.

Together, they've turned a 2,000-square-metre corner of Collegno into 14 zones with names like the Leone Wonder Ramp and the Leone Piazza. And it's all sat beside the brand's live production line, which you'll be able to see throughout. Design Bridge's involvement goes back to 2022, when it reworked Leone's strategy and packaging around the imagination of founder Luigi Leone. The brief centred around "sensory escapism", a bit of strategy-speak from the press release, yes, but it's a good way to explain the vision.

Look at the wall of illustrated lockers behind the big brass wheel that greets you in the main entrance, and you're instantly seeing the 2022 packaging artwork. That includes strawberries and hazelnuts, plus violets, all blown up to the scale of the architecture. The visual language isn't just inspired by Leone's sweet wrappers, though, as it takes cues from Turin itself. You've got the local piazzas and arches, all the brass and filigree, along with hand-painted signwriting. And then it throws in the unexpected – the rainbow facade being the best example, as it's rows of terracotta roof tiles that melt into candy-striped cladding.

The gold script logo sits on top, as though someone has iced it on top of a cake. Inside, the magic continues. There's an apothecary-style essences room lined with tiny drawers labelled bergamotto, chinotto, and genziana. I don't know why, but it suddenly brought back memories of a miniature sweetshop I had as a child. Lots of miniature jars, a cute till and little menus, along with real sweets. Whatever happened to it? I treasured that toy, along with the plasticine market stall I also spent hours playing with.

I'm off on a tangent again, but I'm making an important point, as the experience has most definitely been designed to spark nostalgia. Then there's a wall of embossed sweet moulds with a peephole at child height, and a pastel workshop that reminds me of Annie Atkins's graphics for Wes Anderson. Move over, Wonka. And what about the archive? Decades of Leone tins, posters, lion marks, packaging all sit side by side in acrylic cases. Any graphic designer will be in heaven. You'll certainly get to see how the brand has evolved since 1857. The best bit is that Design Bridge has made the experience "enduring rather than screen-led". Hallelujah.

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The transformation of a historic brand's factory into an immersive experience is significant for the brand/design industry, showcasing innovative strategies that enhance consumer engagement and brand identity.