Enrique Presa honours Portixol’s fishing industry in his identity for seafront restaurant Periplo

Located in the Mallorcan historical fishing district of El Molinar – between the ports of El Molinar and El Portixol – is the restaurant Periplo Portixol, a seafood restaurant that promises an excellent dining experience. The identity of the restaurant, devised by Palma de Mallorca-based designer Enrique Presa, expresses the nautical themes of both the cuisine and the heritage of the region. Starting with the name ‘Periplo’ – a Spanish word with nautical origins – meaning ‘a journey with numerous adventures.’

The nautical and industrial character of Portixol is at the heart of the identity system, which is built around a custom-made stencil typeface which, according to Presa, provides “a very characteristic and differentiating voice” to the visual language. Furthermore, the typeface also conveys “an industrial but warm and relaxed feel” that he felt was appropriate for the personality of the restaurant.

Presa took us through the development process of the typeface, which was primarily based on stencilling templates that were used for marking fishing boats and goods boxes. “We took GT Pressura Mono as a starting point because it perfectly suited the concept of the project,” he tells us, “since it is inspired by metal type printing history as well as engineered letters stamped onto shipping boxes.”

“It was a relatively simple and fun process,” Presa recalls. As the project did not require lowercase letters, only the uppercase letters, numbers and some symbols were drawn. However, “being a monospaced font,” he continues, “there are characters like ‘M’ and ‘W’ that contain diagonals and are narrower than usual, so making these letters stencil was somewhat a bit more complex.”

The finished typeface features on wooden menus covers, carved to highlight the stencil details. It was important for Presa to incorporate natural materials into the execution of the identity, therefore – alongside the wooden covers – Fedrigoni’s Materica paper was selected for the stationery. These pair nicely with the chosen colour palette – which was inspired by the elements. “Like the island of Mallorca,” Presa reveals, “the colour palette is serene and connected to nature.”

Enrique Presa

Periplo Portixol