Pràctica’s loud identity for Santo Cielo celebrates the character and vibrancy of Spanish cuisine

Barcelona and New York-based design studio Pràctica have crafted a vivacious identity and packaging system for delicatessen brand Santo Cielo; a line of products dedicated to celebrating Spanish food, character and culture in China.

“The products being sold exclusively in China was the main starting point for the visual strategy,” Co-founder Anna Berbiela tells us, “it allowed us to use the packaging as a white canvas to represent somehow the Spanish character,” she adds, “playing with clichés that wouldn’t have made sense if the products were sold in Spain.” Used somewhat as an education conduit into an environment unfamiliar with Spanish food, the packaging additionally houses information on Spanish fare and customs, “explaining the mode of consumption and origin in a very didactic way,” Berbiela notes.

With its namesake roughly translating to ‘Oh My God!,’ the brand’s logo is appropriately constructed of exclamation marks to exemplify the amazement, wonder and taste of the products it purveys, as well as a subtle reference to the religious sentiment within its title. Similarly, the packaging is split in two, with one side set out to showcase the character and vibrancy of Spanish culture, and the other dedicated to the brand’s divine influence.

This duality and sense of tension between the two contrasting forces are further expressed in Santo Cielo’s striking typography, which sees Commercial Type’s Le Jeune used for the wordmark – exuding a refined holiness in the wake of the corresponding side’s typographic expression. “The second side aimed to celebrate Spain’s culture by capturing the vibrancy of its character,” Berbiela explains. “To do so we created colourful imagery with vernacular-inspired typefaces,” notably Errata, Bernard Condensed, McCollough and Peignot Condensed, she concludes, “that when combined together act as a metaphor for the diversity and flavour of our territory.”

Pràctica