If you’ve ever been in the market for a vintage wooden crate—the kind with long-forgotten logos and typography of the past—you know that they go for a pretty penny at your local swap meet. Sure, an art director or florist will stuff it full of mason jars and ranunculus or stack them up in the corner for a 20s period piece. But they’re also just pleasant to look at, and often the feel of those boxes transcends the retro-aesthetic into something that feels timeless.
You can say the same thing about Símil Design’s work on Antonio Nadal’s Destil Lats, a range of artisanal and limited-edition liqueurs, and it’s likely why they won the Manter Best Use of Label at Dieline Awards 2021.
With a combined 50 years of experience in the industry, Símil Design’s co-founders and creative directors Pep Bernat Vizcaya and Ainhoa Nicolau Salas set up shop in Mallorca two years ago after spending much of their careers in London and Barcelona. A lot of their work exists in the luxury sector, and they’re no strangers to working in the decidedly non-ghostly world of spirits. It’s also one of the categories they most enjoy working in—not just because they fancy food and drink like the rest of us, but because they can design something tangible, something you can hold.
“It’s graphic design, but it’s 3D, and you can display it. It’s like a piece of art, and it’s tactile,” says Pep.
They had already worked with Antonio Nadal Distilleries for a few projects, but Destil Lat was a new product, one where they wanted to put the brand’s heritage on the label. It was a 100% organic, natural product, and that also needed to be at the forefront of what the new liqueur was trying to communicate. It was also the first time in the brand’s history that they named the spirit after the distillery itself.
“They wanted to represent the story of the company. Antonio Nadal is over 100-years old, and they had a lot of history, but they lost it in a way, so they wanted to bring back this connection with consumers to get some credibility back,” says Pep. Part of the problem is that Antonio Nadal products are everywhere, and they have a reputation as being something mass-produced, even though they make hand-crafted spirits through artisanal means with an old copper still.
Pep and Ainhoa knew they wanted the bottle design to hone in on that craft, artisan feel, but they needed to balance the vintage with the modern. After all, it needed to appeal to the top-shelf crowd and feel like a genuine discovery at a great restaurant or bar. That was the built-in credibility they sought.
“We started to develop that design language with them trying to rescue some of their heritage,” says Ainhoa. “We tried to incorporate that nostalgic look and feel from their origins.” One way that they did this was by raiding some of the brand’s archives, and the “A” and “N” in the bottle’s Antonio Nadal come from the original logo.
To build out the brand identity and represent the distillery’s roots, they looked to vintage fruit boxes, some of which still get utilized by the local community farms.
“The distillery is surrounded by fields of fruit trees, and we wanted to represent the quality of that fruit on the product,” Ainhoa says. “It gets made with real fruit, and we saw the process of how they make the product. When we went to the distillery, we saw the barrels with the macerated fruit. We tried it, and it was amazing. Later, I noticed that the fruit arrives in boxes, some of which are very, very old, and they come from the local farmers, and they have this older typographic language.”
To really bring the home premium notes on the label, they used a letterpress effect on the black ink, giving it a more tactile presence. Colored foil, used minimally, reflects the flavor variant without relying on illustrations of the ingredients. Overall, the packaging needed to bleed authenticity, almost like an older label you would see on a bottle from a bar cart of the past. However, because of its luxe and limited nature, it needed to be subtle without overdoing the gloss and shine.
And sure, they needed to translate the brand’s heritage and give it a vintage aesthetic—that was priority number one from the get-go, but they also managed to build a sense of place.
“You can tell it’s not American,” Ainhoa says. “It has that kind of Mediterranean feel.”
“The distillates line by Antonio Nadal was selected among all beautiful Dieline entries for its incredible appeal and nostalgic design,” said Chiara Tomasi, the marketing and communications manager for Manter and Fedrigoni’s Prime Papers and Brand Protection. “The skillful use of the paper’s unique nuance results in a palette of warm, bright colors. The paper texture is then further enhanced by a clever use of debossing and hot foil resulting in a series of delicate though powerful labels, where spaces and information hierarchies are perfectly managed through interesting and never trivial lettering.”
So the next time you’re looking for the perfect aperitif to close out an extravagant meal, make sure you look for Antonio Nadal. It’s the one with the timeless label.
