Project
Selo
Identity
Art direction
Packaging
2025
The brief
Selo has printed labels and seals for small makers in Aveiro since 2018: jam and honey producers, potters, coffee roasters and soap makers, about 5,000 orders a year, most of them from Portugal and Spain. Its site showed every product as a flat white render, so makers ordered what looked safe, white paper labels, and wrote in to ask what a holographic seal actually looked like. The shop wanted a name people would remember and pictures that answered that question, before the Christmas rush in November 2025.
The idea
Selo is Portuguese for seal, so the name already says what the shop does. We stacked it, SE over LO, in a weight heavy enough to fill any shape on the order form, and printed it in every film Selo sells. Then we photographed each sticker where makers use them: on a jar, closing an envelope, on a shop window in the sun. Those photographs replaced the renders on every product page.
One mark, any shape
The name in two lines of Rubik at its heaviest, packed tight enough to fill a 25 mm oval and a 150 mm lozenge without redrawing. Each shape on the order form is shown in a different film, on the kind of thing makers stick it to.
Seals
Round, scalloped and star-shaped seals for envelopes and mailers. The black scallop carries a gloss wordmark on matte black that only shows when the light catches it, which is why makers use it on gift boxes.
Finishes
Oil slick, mirror gold and clear film, each shot lifting at an edge so the film and the backing both show. Clear film is made for windows and glass, where the colour behind the sticker does half the work.
The sample pack
Seven stickers in seven shapes and films in a clear bag, sent free with every first order and sold on its own for €3, so makers can try a finish on their own jars before ordering a thousand.
What changed
The new site and the sample pack went live on 6 October 2025. Makers started ordering films they could finally see on a jar, and the emails changed from what a finish looks like to how soon it can ship. Every parcel now leaves closed with a seal in a finish the customer hasn’t ordered yet.
Credits
Okapi: Duarte Neves (lead designer), Marta Lobo (order form copy), Ana Pires (sample pack)
Selo: Joel Matos (founder), Sara Pinho (production)
With: photography by Rafael Costa in Aveiro; stickers printed and cut by Selo
