Project
Bolo
Packaging
Packaging system
Photography
2025
The brief
Bolo bakes in a kitchen in Bonfim and only delivers: birthday cakes, loaf cakes, layer cakes and boxes of cupcakes, about 600 orders a week across Porto and Gaia, most of them placed the night before. The cakes went out in plain white boxes with a handwritten label, so riders lifted lids to check orders and cakes arrived with fingerprints in the frosting. Bolo wanted packaging a rider could check from across the room and a customer would photograph before cutting, in time for its first Christmas season in 2025.
The idea
Every box says what’s inside in one word, set huge on board in the cake’s own colour: Lemon on yellow, Carrot on orange, Chocolate on brown, Birthday on pink. The kitchen packs by colour, the riders check by word, and nobody lifts a lid. A round red seal with the order number closes every bag, so the right cake reaches the right door.
The boxes
Square boxes in four colours of board, one per cake, printed in a single ink with the name on the lid and the sides. Each holds its cake tightly enough to travel on a scooter.
Bags and seals
White paper bags with the wordmark huge in red, folded over and closed with a round sticker carrying the order number, which the rider checks against the app.
Candles and extras
A pink box of twisted candles, cupcake boxes, and red ribbon for orders marked as gifts.
The shoot
Every cake was shot sliced, on a vivid backdrop in hard afternoon sun, for the menu and the app.
What changed
The boxes launched in November 2025, ahead of the Christmas orders. The kitchen now stacks the evening’s cakes by colour, and the yellow Lemon box became Bolo’s best advert: people photograph it on the doorstep before they open it.
Credits
Okapi: Duarte Neves (lead designer), Ana Pires (packaging), Marta Lobo (copy)
Bolo: Leonor Sá (founder and baker), Pedro Gomes (deliveries)
With: boxes printed in Maia; photography by Rafael Costa
