Project
Ferro
Identity
Packaging
2025
The brief
Ferro has cast iron in Guimarães since 1958, for decades as machine parts and, since 2016, as skillets, casserole pots and griddles for cooks across Europe. Fifteen people pour about 30,000 pieces a year. The cookware still left in the foundry’s industrial boxes, with a part number on the side and a photocopied leaflet inside, so a cook who had paid €90 for a skillet opened something that looked like a gearbox. Ferro wanted a brand that matched the pans before it started selling directly online in autumn 2025.
The idea
Iron is cast once and lasts a lifetime, so the wordmark had to survive the same process. We drew a slab serif heavy enough to come cleanly out of a sand mould, and it is cast in a ring on the underside of every pan. Everything that travels with the pan is kraft and one rust orange, the colour of iron left out in the rain, which is also the one thing the care card teaches you to prevent.
The pans
Three shapes to start: a 26 cm skillet, a 24 cm casserole with its lid, and a small pan for one egg. Each is shot in use, on slate, in the low sun the foundry gets at the end of a shift.
The mark in the iron
The wordmark is cast in a 70 mm ring on the underside of every piece, from the same sand mould as the pan. A cook sees it once a day, turning the pan over to wash it.
Boxes and tape
Kraft boxes in three sizes printed in one rust orange, sealed with paper tape that carries the wordmark every 30 cm. The boxes are cut to the pans, so nothing else goes in but a sheet of paper.
Care
Every pan ships with a care card and a 50 ml bottle of linseed oil: three lines on seasoning, washing and storing it, and the foundry’s promise to re-season any Ferro pan sent back, free, for life.
What changed
The new boxes and the online shop opened together in October 2025, and the foundry stopped printing part numbers on anything a cook will see. The free re-seasoning turned out to be the brand’s best advert: cooks post the pans they send back, and the ones that come home.
Credits
Okapi: Tomás Reis (lead designer), Ana Pires (packaging), Marta Lobo (care card)
Ferro: Joaquim Mendes (managing director), Rui Faria (foundry)
With: boxes printed in Guimarães; photography by Rafael Costa at the foundry
