Enrique Puerto creates bold branding for baking powder company Loosey-Goosey

For Mexico City-based designer Enrique Puerto, much of the creative process, especially within his field of graphic design, is based on emotion. No matter the project or its eventual visual execution, Enrique’s freelance practice begins by surveying – or in some cases trying to evoke – an emotional reaction in a potential viewer. Often this comes to life by characterising certain elements of his design work, adding playful personality via typography or symbolic illustrations that live within his design systems. A perfect example of this at play is his work for baking-powder company Loosey-Goosey.

Enrique developed his design approach through a series of fortunate events, or “synchronicities of the universe,” as he puts it. His initial journey into design and art direction began at Futura, a creative direction studio based in Mexico City, which he describes as his “greatest influence” as well as “the best school I could have had”. The designer embarked on projects for brands of varying sizes while always pushing for creative challenges. “Each day was learning, learning, learning,” he reflects. “How to take challenges and visually land them in something new – new for me as much as the studio and the client.” Post-Futura, Enrique then took the leap to intern at Snask, a creative studio based in Stockholm. Heading to Europe “without ever having traveled, without knowing where I was going to live, without knowing enough English to communicate,” he says design work provided a new way to connect with others. “It didn’t matter to me, I wanted to learn from the best.”

Working at these studios has generated a noticeable enthusiasm for art direction and design, which is now translated into Enrique’s freelance practice. Working with a variety of commercial and cultural clients, the designer’s practice largely involves injecting branding projects with a level of experimentation – such as utilising 3D design to envisage the transformative effect a product like baking powder can have, as he’s done for Loosey-Goosey.

A baking-powder brand that incorporates flavours such as rose petals and saffron through to bread and sweet potato in its product, Loosey-Goosey initially reached out to Enrique for the emotion-led work featured in his growing portfolio. The brand was keen to market its product in a way that would connect with the world of emotional eating, concerned with “how difficult it seems to have good mental health in this era,” the designer explains. In turn, Loosey-Goosey would speak to a new generation of home cooks by promoting health and naturally flavoured meals. “I related to them,” Enrique says. “I enjoy my job but when you’re working more than eight hours a day and your back starts to hurt, you just want to end the day by pampering yourself with something delicious.”

Building out an identity with a balance between work, life and healthy eating in mind, Enrique’s branding for Loosey-Goosey is suprisingly bold – at least compared to other baking-powder products. The brand’s packaging centres around a characterful illustration of a figure munching away, composed next to the flavour details of each edition and a bubble-like logo. Emphasising this typographic approach is a 3D representation of how Loosey-Goosey may expand the flavour of a meal, with giant balloon bubbles squeezing out of the product’s packaging in the promotional materials created by Adrià Tañà Ferrer.

“The creative freedom that the client gave us was the main factor of the success of the project,” says Enrique. Trusting the designer to create a branding aesthetic unlike anything else on the market was also backed up by significant research. “In our investigations we found out that the baking market is not investing in design,” he says. “Most of them are out of date, with labels full of claims and a clear tendency for ‘vintage’ design. We saw an opportunity to break with that aesthetic, to make something more modern and appealing to the emotions of the consumers.”

Such attention to the emotions to create a relatability via graphic design is an approach we’re likely to continue to see from Enrique’s practice. “I think emotions are important in our lives,” he concludes. “We should embrace them more.”