Pueblo packs turn Spanish village roots into pride — Pentawards Food Platinum 2025

Simple Packaging Studio, the Barcelona studio founded in 2021 by Gaizka Ruiz Madrazo after two decades designing for big FMCG brands, took on Pueblo, a line of vacuum-packed Spanish cold meats. In Spain, village life has often not been celebrated, yet it is where the richest traditions and flavours are born; the brief became making 'pueblo' — the word itself meaning village — feel like a source of strength.

Package cured meats as a village-pride manifesto: oversized 'Pueblo' typography, adobe-red and straw-gold colours, natural kraft paper and a rope from the curing shed.

The design rests on three pillars: typography, materials and presentation. The word Pueblo, oversized and bold, became the entire focal graphic. Colour comes from the red of adobe bricks on old village houses and the golden yellow of sun-dried straw; the sleeve is natural kraft paper chosen for its unrefined texture, and a rope — the kind used to hang and cure Spanish meats — wraps the pack as the finishing detail.

The pack took the Platinum Award for the best food packaging across all categories at Pentawards 2025, where Simple was also named Best Newcomer with seven shortlisted projects. Pueblo additionally won first place in Food at BESTiN! FOOD 2025 and second place in Food at the Dieline Awards 2025, and Spanish design press framed it as proof that packaging's job is to explain honestly where a product comes from.

Pueblo is a Spanish cured-meat line whose packaging was conceived as "a bold tribute to our roots". Its premise is that village life has not always been celebrated in Spain, even though it is where the country's richest traditions, flavours and stories come from — and that, as the designers put it, everyone carries a piece of the village inside them.

Barcelona's Simple Packaging Studio, founded in 2021 by Gaizka Ruiz Madrazo, built the identity on three pillars. Typography: the name Pueblo alone, set large and bold, carries the graphic because the word itself exudes strength and meaning. Materials: natural kraft paper with an unrefined texture that speaks of artisanal craft. Presentation: adobe-brick red and sun-dried straw gold from old village houses, finished with a rope of the kind used in the hanging and curing process — a minimal composition that still reads unmistakably as Spanish charcuterie.

The line won the Platinum Award at Pentawards 2025, the best food packaging across all categories, and the studio was simultaneously named Pentawards Best Newcomer after arriving with seven recognised projects in its first year of entry. Pueblo also took first place in Food at BESTiN! FOOD 2025 and second in Food at the Dieline Awards 2025. Spanish design press read the win as a sign that packaging's future lies less in dressing a product than in honestly explaining where it comes from and whom it belongs to.

The name is the identity: setting the word Pueblo huge and bold turns the product's meaning — village — into the entire graphic statement.

Materials carry the story: kraft paper and a real curing rope connect the pack to the craft itself instead of decorating over it.

It attacked a stereotype head-on, reframing rural Spanish origins from shame to a source of strength and pride.

The minimalism is culturally specific: every element is drawn from the actual drying-and-curing tradition, so nothing feels generic.

To sell heritage, use the craft's own objects as the design: a curing rope and adobe colours carry more honesty than any invented decoration — and one strong word can carry the identity.

At Pentawards 2025, Pueblo's Food Platinum anchored a debut haul of seven awards for Simple, which was named Best Newcomer of the Year; founder Gaizka Ruiz Madrazo had left a 20-year FMCG career to found the studio in 2021. Pueblo then took first place in Food at BESTiN! FOOD 2025 and second at the Dieline Awards 2025. Spanish design press used it as proof that independent studios could compete with big international agencies, and Pentawards director Adam Ryan described the 2025 edition as rewarding designs that touch daily life, reduce waste and tell stories with meaning.