I’ll probably get shot down in flames but is there a business relationship between Soylent and Huel?
The packaging is identical, as the general layout / content of the website and forum? Is there any reason for it? I personally like the layout and ‘clean’ look of the site, but it was quite interesting to see how similar it was to Soylents!
Just interested. Not wanting to cause any controversy 
You’re kidding, right? 
I’m not! Honestly what am I missing? 
I can kind of see it, actually, there is a small similarity in look and feel.
I don’t think there’s any kind of plagiarism going on or anything though - I think both companies are just going for a minimalistic look (to match with the product aesthetic, I guess?)
With clean, minimalistic websites there are always going to be a lot of similarities - there’s not much there to make different!
It just got me thinking when I saw the packaging. It’s so similar.
The forum can be forgiven because I’m sure lot’s of companies use it, and I guess so can the ingredients pictures because let’s face it, how many ways can you take a picture of rice 
I dunno, I just thought there may be some business relationship.
No relationship I’m sorry to say! Quite a few companies in this sector have the white, clean looking styling. Soylent are their own brand and company, so whilst I’ve tried Soylent, we don’t do any business.
Funny, I noticed this just yesterday. Very similar site. Investigating the source code they have very different engines though. The forum is a standard piece of software used by many on-line shop builders and other forum providers.
I always just assumed it was intentional, but personally never had a problem with it.
Soylent was first developed by a software engineer using similar techniques to those used in software development. All of the subsequent products are basically like project forks of that original project (you can even see proof of this in a lot of the DIY recipies on their site). I would think that it makes perfect sense to expect many similarities in subsequent projects, but these are not mandatory, of course. It might be considered more risky to change elements that aren’t broken that have been proven to work.
The point of Soylent and the products that grew up afterwards is that they use minimal ingredients necessary to provide 100% nutrition without unnecessary waste. It’s logical that the packaging would follow this pattern.
Saying that, I do like Joylent’s packaging though, with its quirky marketing humour, but I do think this might not hit the right tone with some potential customers looking for something as serious as their nutrition! Even without reading the ingredient list, Huel’s marketing and packaging design comes across as something much more serious, and possibly more trustworthy to eat long term. At least that’s how I perceive it.
There is something childlike about Joylent’s packaging. I can never quite decide whether I find this endearing or off-putting. On the one hand, it shows that they have a sense of humour. On the other hand, it makes it more difficult to take them seriously.
And of course, one could argue that time and money spent on colourful designs could be better spent on nutrition research, etc.
It can be hard to work out where the humour ends with the Joylent team.
I remember when they revealed that for the first 6 months, their product was mixed in an old cement mixer, everyone thought it was a joke…but it turned out to be true. Yikes