Adinkra symbols were originally used to make African hand-printed cloths, initially from the Ashanti people of Ghana but also produced by the Gyaman people of Ivory Coast. Around the 19th Century, the Ashanti developed a unique art of Adinkra printing cloths, made and used exclusively by royalty and spiritual leaders for sacred ceremonies.

Today Adinkra cloths are used for a wide range of social activities, in addition to the sacred usage in festivals, church-going, weddings, naming ceremonies and initiation rituals. The meaning of each symbol derives from a proverb, event, human attitude, animal behavior, plants and shapes of inanimate and man-made objects.

The symbols and their meanings are still used to convey a message through a wide range of products including clothing accessories, interior decoration, book covers, packages, business logos and why not: chocolate.

Ghana supplies today half of the world's cocoa (along Ivory Coast) but when buying a chocolate bar from a retailer in the UK, it reads Nestlè (or some other brand). So, David contacted several chocolate manufactures with no luck, apart from The Day Chocolate Company, owned by a farmers' co-operative of Ghanaian Cocoa growers called Kuapa Kokoo.

David explained to them the idea of making a new brand of chocolate, exporting the visual symbolism characteristic of Adinkra, together with the prime substance for chocolate production: a cultural product, which contains not only the cocoa powder from the country of origin, but also delivers a message conveying its original culture.

Unfortunately, although they liked the idea, we never put it into practice.

You can download our Adinkra font for free, install it in your PC or Mac and use it for anything you want, just one thing . . . use it wisely.