The Nata Pura Logo is very special to us. It represents the moment the business idea began to manifest itself. It’s like the Logo plucked the idea of a branded, high-end Nata being sold across the world market from Mabilio’s head and made it one step closer to reality. In fact, when Mabilio did his first trade show, all he had was the Logo and a provisional recipe to test his idea and the acceptance of the Nata in London. And that first test was overwhelmingly positive, not only because people enjoyed the Nata but also because they were drawn by the Logo to a branded pastry.
Since then, the Logo has become more than our brand’s image; it has become something of a talisman. Mainly because it was designed in-house. And the way its design came about was serendipitous. Nuno had no experience working within the food industry, so he was unaware of the usual communications standards. Challenged by Mabilio, Nuno went about it like he was designing a design-heavy tech product brand.
He came up with a single stroke representation of the Nata, steam rising as it comes out fresh from the oven. That represents our value proposition. Eat a nata anywhere in the world with the same freshly baked quality as if you had picked it up straight out of a little Portuguese pastry shop.
The stroke is soft, and it swells and swivels – it represents the sensual pleasure that comes with eating a Nata, the fragrant cream overwhelming you on the first bite. The crunch of the puff pastry base is on the straight lines of the Nata’s distinctive shape.
The colour scheme immediately connects with the gourmet, high-end nature of the product. Silvery grey over matte black. It’s elegant and poised and tells you all about how quality is a core value to the brand. It is also different from other branded pastries or branded pastry houses. These are usually light and happy, while Nata Pura is similar to gourmet chocolates or artisanal bonbons. In a sense, it was as if the Logo predicted the path we would take with our flavoured core technique.
A brand identity is a dynamic, living thing. Over the years, the Logo has been tuned and refined without jeopardising what it fundamentally is. As we started the trade show circuit, we noticed the Logo was a formidable differentiating factor. So we leaned into it, we made the grey more metallic, almost sliver, enhanced the gradients and smoothed the black background. It became more three dimensional, like a representation of an artefact. This also allowed the Logo to work better in conjunction with our partner’s logos, like Paul Bassett – standing out on its own but not upstaging other information or images.
Later, when we revamped our Food Service and Retail product lines, we created 2 sub-brands: Nata Pura Black and Nata Pura White. The overarching Nata Pura brand then took on golden tones, still metallic. The gold is all class, all indulgence. It also represents our ambition of presenting the Nata Pura product as the standard to which all other natas are compared. Gold is regal, and so is our product. In truth, the story of our company can be read as the story of this Logo.
