Maria and Ricardo's New Packaging Features A Heritage-Driven Brand Identity

Driven Brand Identity

Maria & Ricardo’s rebranding journey marks a considerable deviation from their previous packaging design of eight years. The new design is a vibrant upgrade that instantly captures shoppers’ attention on store shelves. Celebrating their rich Mexican heritage, the design infuses cultural elements that resonate with customers while preserving a cohesive look across all product lines. Inspired by the colors of Mexico, the palette is bold and modern, with distinct color bands for each product line, making them easily recognizable. The typography, a fusion of minimalist sans-serif fonts with Mexican flourishes, adds a touch of authenticity. At the same time, the unique “sunrise” window showcases the delicious texture of Maria & Ricardo’s tortillas, creating a memorable and heritage-driven brand identity in a market often dominated by muted palettes.

After eight years of our iconic packaging design, Maria and Ricardo’s Tortillas embarked on a branding and packaging upgrade with a clear vision in mind. Our previous packaging had served us well, but it was time for a fresh perspective. We aimed to create a bolder and more eye-catching appearance on store shelves, ensuring that our products would instantly capture the attention of shoppers. Moreover, this update provided us with the opportunity to celebrate the rich Mexican heritage that has always been at the heart of our brand, infusing our packaging with cultural elements that resonate with our customers. This redesign also allowed us to achieve a more cohesive and unified look across all our product lines, creating a stronger brand identity that reflects our commitment to quality and authenticity.

Maria & Ricardo’s new packaging colors, Amy Peterson:

The inspiration for the color palette of Maria & Ricardo’s new packaging came from our authentic roots – Mexico. From the vibrant colors found in Mexican dishes, authentic clothing, and festivals to the natural colors of Mexico’s architecture and land, our product line embraces all of these. Our colors are bold and bright with a touch of modernity with a dash of heritage.

Each product line features two main colors which make that line distinctive for consumers to easily spot on the shelf but still feel like one brand. Flavor color bands help easy navigation between products and also add fun touches of color. By using vibrant colors on the packaging, they pop against the tortillas peaking through our half circle window showcasing the tortillas delicious texture.

Maria & Ricardo’s New Packaging Fonts:

We’re hoping to have more information from Noah Clark, Honeymoon, the font designer soon but in the meantime, you are welcome to reach out to him directly.

Our overall approach to design was inspired by a desire to merge a heritage-driven brand with a modern sensibility. Maria & Ricardo’s has always embraced bright, vibrant colors so we wanted to maintain that equity, especially in a market where better-for-you brands often gravitate to more muted, earthy or desaturated palettes. We wanted to be loud and proud. Typography choices followed a similar logic, as we built a foundation of minimalist, sans serif fonts but added select flourishes like spurs to the letterforms here and there for a touch of Mexican authenticity. Structurally, the layout is fairly utilitarian in order to accommodate a large amount of product information, so we kept things simple with stacked rows and color blocking, all supporting a larger “sunrise” shaped transparent window to the tortilla itself.