WHAT
Casa Malka literally translates to House of the Queen (Casa means “house” in Spanish; Malka means “queen” in Hebrew.) When we were asked to create a brand for a new line of tequila, the only thing that existed was the name. Everything else in this raw and royal world we created from scratch.
Welcome to the queendom. Stay a while?
HOW
↳Strategy
↳Visual Brand Identity
↳Verbal Brand Identity
↳Bottle Design & Fabrication
↳Packaging Design
↳3D Rendering in collaboration
with CG artist Haruko Hayakawa
Like the product itself, the parts of the brand identity are comprised of a mix of soft and hard, feminine and masculine. Hyper-feminine attributes are contrasted through the use of Azeret Mono, a brutalist font used in both the wordmark and title copy. And central to the brand, of course, is the emblem of the queen herself, resting within her queendom.
Visually, the brand succeeds through restraint - paired back but exuberant at the same time.
We worked closely with CG artist Haruko Hawakaya to create dream-like worlds for the Casa Malka bottle to sit in. This process — one of many weeks — played a significant role in determining the brand DNA.
What lighting do we use? What types of cacti are growing? How much moss, and what texture? Is the bottle elevated, or flush with the earth?
The in-depth exploration of these questions ultimately indicated how the Casa Malka brand would behave across different applications. And because we created this brand while the tequila was still in pre-production, these images served as the primary vehicle for marketing efforts as well.
The brand assets directly mirror the look, feel, and overall emotional tone reflected in the physical bottle and in the beverage itself. The verbal branding, specifically, evokes an extremely sensual and inviting atmosphere that feels at once intimate and accessible. Hyper-specific imagery was used in both the storytelling and visual scenes. This allowed us to communicate the brand concept and essence through each and every consumer touchpoint.
