The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
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
Beautiful work!
Thank you so much, Bella! Really appreciate it.
these look great!
Thanks, Nicolette! Glad you liked it.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Trending
retrofuturism
Share your favorite designs from the past exploring the distant future. Or your own take on the aesthetic 🚀
halftone
Dots. Texture. Grain. Let's see your designs using the halftone technique.
Midjourney
Creatives are showing off what they're making with Midjourney.
colorgrade
Video editors sound off: How do you enhance the mood of your video in color grading?
Related posts
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Boyle’s Food Truck visual identity
The other day I started thinking of fictional brands from TV shows and If you ever watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine you must know Boyle!
The idea was simple:
What would Boyle’s food truck look like if it were a real Brooklyn food truck?
I approached it as a visual designer, building the identity around the character himself — enthusiastic, slightly chaotic, unapologetically passionate about food, and very Brooklyn.
I worked on the visual language across the truck, typography, colors, graphics and supporting touchpoints to make it feel like an actual food business with a mascot, rather than just a prop from a TV show.
The challenge was finding the balance between Brooklyn, food culture and Boyle's personality without making it feel like a generic New York food truck.
And honestly, fictional brands are some of my favorite design exercises.
There’s already a story, a personality and an audience.
The fun part is figuring out:
What does that look like?
Creativity at its Peak
POV: you're a designer but all you like to do is create delicious textures for ambitious clients ready to take a risk.
In the tech world where we're governed by minimalistic and sharp design, a new era is coming. The era of bold, colorful and textured design, where tech becomes... appealing 🍭
The real gatekeeper for textured brands is usually the product team, not the client — heavy texture tends to get traded away the moment someone raises load times or dark mode. The work that survives keeps the texture in marketing surfaces and lets the UI carry a quieter version....
Branding is a feeling....its not just the logo. It's everything you see, hear, and read.
Everything you see here communicates a feeling of high-quality service, luxury, and a sense that not only will these guys will keep your property pristine, but will go above and beyond.
This is exactly the task I was assigned to help Gattuso with, originally called "Lawn & Order". They wanted to land bigger clients, nicer neighborhoods, add all-season service packages, and break into the commercial space as well. Their name was holding them back. It didn't communicate the right feeling.
We workshoped dozens of names and landed on the owner's family name...so they can build trust and recognition in the their local market by putting their name on the line.
We then developed an elegant wordmark, brandmark, language, and a brand system that solidifies client expectation and elevates them as a serious and trusted partner.
Impressive 😍