Tentenela

Agency: Mamba Studio
Animation: Kaori Hayama
3D Artist: Miquel Nadal
Location: Mexico
Project Type: To be launched 2022
Client: Tentenela Coffee Company
Packaging Contents: Coffee
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Aluminium
Printing Process: Offset printing & Foil stamping

Grow in Mexican Fincas, Tentenela is a gourmet coffee crafted by hand and sun-dried with the utmost care and attention to supreme quality. A coffee in a unique packaging that not only contains coffee but also the Mexican culture.

Mexican culture is a blend of the country’s indiginous roots and its history of European conquest and colonization. Modern Mexican traditions are often based on the distinct history that lies in the hearts of the people. The result is the intense color and deep fervor. Tentenela, is a coffee about that blend that enriches, that build Mexico and brings identity. Bright colors and fantastic creatures bring to life a coffee inspired by stories, traditions and heritances united with a contemporary and lively Mexico. Each element of the packaging design tells the same story: the blending culture.

The color, known in Mexico as “Rosa Mexicano” is a color with a particular history that goes back to the multidisciplinary designer and artist Ramón Valdiosera and even further with the dyes obtained by the cochineal grana, the bougainvillea, the sweets, the architecture of Barragan. The Mexican pink color is intrinsic in Mexican culture.

Naming. The Casta System was supposed to provide order and clarity to Spanish America’s racial mixtures and establish a hierarchy of social status, wealth, and legal rights. We often find names as “criollos or mestizo” on contemporary products, although few hear from those that their family tree involved multiple races. We decided to invert the pyramid and thus we found “Tentenelaire”: one of the most complex mixtures of the “castas” system … almost at the bottom, where the Mexican population that we know today, rises.

The graphic elements. To continue this dialogue that blend enriches us, we decided to reinterpret the wonderful alebrijes. These figures that combine physiognomic elements of various real or imaginary animals to form fantastic creatures with vibrant colors. Thus, the sides of the packaging are soaked in colors and patterns with organic figures while on the front, we can see animals within the same frame made by the name of the company.

Each detail of the packaging is taken care of, so we add a detail at the base of the bag with a phrase in Spanish that translates as: They say that not because you get up early, you wake up earlier, but it does help with a good coffee in hand. Maybe it sound better in spanish. And right here our last detail: the use of Spanglish. The use of two languages is common in Mexico and this café was born to live anywhere in the world without forgetting where it comes from.

What’s Unique?
Reinterpreting the elements of a culture and creating something different and contemporary that stands out from the shelf.