Sardinhas / Brand, Packaging & Campaign

Sardinhas is Portuguese for sardines. Nothing more, nothing less.

An independent brand concept for a Portuguese sardine tin, built end to end: identity, illustration, packaging, 3D and a ten-image editorial campaign. Four boards trace the work.

01 / Identity and illustration. The wordmark is hand-cut lettering with a sardine living inside the D. One rule runs through the whole system: the letters stay charcoal, and only the fish in the D takes the colour of each flavour. The illustration is a three-ink linocut shoal, sea blue and charcoal on cream paper, with a third ink that changes with the flavour: lemon, olive, tomato, piri-piri. Style explored in Midjourney V8, locked with a master image and derived across the four flavours.

02 / Packaging. Two skins. Outside, a printed paper wrap with folded ends, the way Portuguese conservas have been sold for a century. Inside, a lithographed tin with the same shoal on the lid and the body in the flavour ink. Four flavours: Lemon, Olive Oil, Tomato, Piri-Piri. All texts, nutrition and barcode in English. Every tin and wrap was built and rendered in Blender, textures generated from the vector artwork at 20 px per mm.

03 / Campaign. One table, one sun. Cream plaster, hard late-afternoon light, the same hand in every frame. The colour never comes from the ground: it comes from the tin, the printed linen napkin and the food. Full petiscos tables, the tin opened at the centre, a shop interior, a printed paper bag, four napkins for four flavours. Photographs generated with Nano Banana Pro through Higgsfield at 4K, always with the Blender renders as product reference.

Tools: Midjourney V8 for the illustration language, Blender 5.2 for packaging and renders, Nano Banana Pro via Higgsfield for the campaign, Claude Code as the direction hub for the whole project.

Creative direction, brand identity, packaging and AI-assisted visual development by Mauricio Pontual / MP House Studio. Independent concept, not commissioned.

#BrandIdentity #PackagingDesign #ArtDirection #Illustration #Blender #GenerativeAI #FoodPhotography #Sardines

The rule that colour never comes from the ground in the campaign shots, only from the tin, napkin and food, is the kind of constraint that makes a whole shoot feel intentional instead of styled. Four boards to cover identity through campaign is thorough for a personal concept piece.