Halo Top Brand Guidelines: The Low-Calorie Pint & Its Look

Halo Top rewrote the pint’s math.

Halo Top is a lesson in reframing a whole category. Created by Justin Woolverton, a former attorney, and joined by co-founder Doug Bouton (also an ex-lawyer, as president/COO), it was developed in a Los Angeles home kitchen and launched in 2012 under the entity Eden Creamery. The pitch was radical: a low-calorie, high-protein, lower-sugar pint — sweetened with stevia and erythritol — designed so you could eat the whole thing.

Its signature design move made the maths the message: the per-pint calorie count is printed prominently on the front. Sales grew explosively — roughly 2,500% in 2016 — and in July 2017 Halo Top became the best-selling ice cream pint in US grocery, ahead of Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs at that time. The range spans dairy, dairy-free, keto and pops.

(Honest notes: it was founded around 2011 and launched in 2012; there are two founders — Woolverton and Bouton; the “outsold Ben & Jerry’s” claim is specifically about the pint format in US grocery around July 2017, not ice cream overall; and it is now owned by Wells Enterprises (2019), which was itself acquired by Ferrero in 2023. No official brand hex is published, and calorie counts vary by flavour.)

Halo Top lives in a gold-and-brights palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Halo Top’s identity is bright, premium and playful — a metallic gold, a bright berry, a mint, a cream, and a deep navy. The unifying cue is a metallic gold accent (the halo, the gold spoon), combined with bright, flavour-coded colours across the range, and a dominant calorie number on the front of each pint. It signals a modern, guilt-free indulgence rather than a traditional premium tub. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these tones are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is a gold accent plus a bold number can be an identity. Halo Top’s world reads as bright and confident. For designers, it is a reminder that a single premium cue (gold) plus a fearless piece of information design (the calorie count) can define a brand, matching a product that sells on a number. The takeaways: pick one premium accent; let flavour colours vary beneath it; and treat any single hex as unofficial — using the deep navy for small text so the gold stays a highlight, not body copy.

The wordmark spirit is a rounded sans — friendly and modern.

Halo Top’s identity carries a friendly, modern, permission-giving spirit — a “Halo Top” wordmark playing on the halo pun of a virtuous indulgence. A rounded sans captures the mood: it is approachable and upbeat, the register of a brand that tells you to enjoy the whole pint. Set against gold accents and a bold calorie number, the rounded sans feels friendly and guilt-free — exactly the playful, “indulgence never felt so good” personality Halo Top carries. It is welcoming rather than austere, mirroring a better-for-you product that still wants to feel like a treat. (Halo Top’s real wordmark is a trademark we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not something we assert.) Because the specific mark is not ours to use, the honest description is “a rounded sans spirit,” not the Halo Top logo. The type behaves like the brand: friendly, modern and permission-giving.

Halo Top stands for the number on the pint.

Halo Top is a lesson in selling on a single, legible idea. It did not compete on richest or most premium; it competed on a number — a whole pint you could finish without guilt — and put that number on the front of the pack. By turning nutrition into the hero of the design, Halo Top rode a viral moment to the top of the grocery pint chart. The differentiator is clarity: find the one thing people care about and make it impossible to miss.

For designers and brand-builders, Halo Top offers a clear takeaway: information design can be brand design. The lessons: identify the single decisive fact (the calorie count); make it the loudest element on the pack; and wrap it in a friendly, permission-giving voice. It is also a reminder to stay accurate: Halo Top launched in 2012 with two founders, its “outsold Ben & Jerry’s” claim is scoped to pints in 2017, and it now sits under Wells and Ferrero — with the palette here an unofficial interpretation. Halo Top made a number the hero — proof that clarity can be the difference.

Keep Halo Top’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.