NAU XXI

June — 2013

OUTSIDE THE BOX

Luís Mendonça requalified the design of Portuguese canned food and renewed its identity through the José Gourmet project, which he built in partnership with Adriano Casal Ribeiro. This is a conversation about how to combine aesthetics with the content of a product.

How did the name José Gourmet come about?

I met Adriano Casal Ribeiro when we were both living in Macao. I was teaching Design and he was flying planes at Air Macau. In many of our conversations we ended up talking about the products of our homeland and how little importance they had for most of the countries in Europe and the world. The charcuterie, the canned foods, the meats, the cheeses, the nuts, our raw material and gastronomy. These conversations ended with Adriano telling me that one day he would do something to promote Portuguese products. He often challenged me to collaborate with him on the design. The conversations were frequent, but it was a long time before we realised that we were actually taking the first steps.

If you had to summarise José Gourmet, would you say that it is design with flavour or gastronomy with style?

I would say it is a project of quality and choice. In every single thing we select, we choose only the best of what is done in Portugal. It is a project with identity but no nostalgia, of good taste but backed up by substance. It is a contemporary project that cares for content and aesthetic qualities. A project of genuine and “well-dressed” products.

When you were told about refurbishing the traditional canned food product, did you think this would be the perfect product to work “outside the box”?

We studied the market, sampled some of the finest products made in Portugal and tried to understand why a product with so much nutritional quality, so rich in omega 3 and without preservatives, was missing from the tables of Portuguese families. Why wasn’t it consumed at lunch or dinner, or as an afternoon or late-night snack? Why was it kept so far apart from a good wine? Why did it lag behind the best products? And why did it never feature in sophisticated dishes? The graphics of the packaging is only one part of the design. The strategy involved repositioning the customers on a different level, inviting them to embrace a fresh attitude and raising their awareness to these products and their gastronomic potential.

The launch of the brand was a collaboration with twelve designers you chose, who could easily adapt the canned product to the children’s universe.

The choice of the illustrators was part of the strategy. I chose twelve of the best-known children’s illustrators from recent years, illustrators that have shaped the dreams of past generations and who have brought joy to so many boys and girls, some of them now adults and with children of their own. The graphic design of the packaging was studied in advance. The illustrators were given small indications, which is standard art direction work in this type of initiative, when more than one author is involved and when you know what you want.

Was it after José Gourmet that canned food reached modernity? Have you looked at the competition?

I will take that question as a compliment. For a long time, Portugal was drunk on the feats of our ancestors. I believe there are companies that have done a remarkable job of rehabilitating small factories and trades, which have preserved the graphic environment of the past, some of them with great quality, and most of them associated with Salazarism. To Adriano I said that that would not be our path, that I would like to try to take bigger risks and do things that would give us more pleasure. Every day I’m on top of what’s being done. I enjoy putting together a puzzle, a history of events. I like to try and understand to what extent what is done here can influence something outside. This makes us proud, but at the same time it makes us aware of the need to keep empowering the North.

The graphics of the packaging is only one part of the design. The strategy involved repositioning the customers on a different level, inviting them to embrace a fresh attitude and raising their awareness to these products and their gastronomic potential.

Maria Organic, is she José Gourmet’s younger sister who lives obsessed with biological products and the sustainability of the planet?

I don’t know if she’s the younger sister. She could be a girlfriend, she might even be a cousin. They’re both out there. We don’t know what they’re going to do or how they will fare. They both need to go their own ways, they need to grow, to influence and to be influenced. I believe they will be part of a network in the future. They are committed to promoting the finest products that Portugal has to offer and ready to seduce not just the Portuguese, but the Spanish, French, German, Japanese…

If you were given the freedom to requalify the design of another major national product, which démodé product would you choose?

Politics and politicians. They seem to me more and more only products of themselves, no design, hastily placed on the shelves to sell. Some expired, others without instructions, with nothing but packaging. And no guarantee.