Get the best of Domus straight to your inbox!

Eyescream & Friends

M Barcelona creates a corporate identity for a Taiwan-style ice cream putting two sugar eyes on the top, making it a character-monster that determines all the projects.

This is a Taiwan-style, shaved‚ ice cream (yet made with Italian gelato) with a texture somewhere between sorbet and ice cream

It’s kind of particular, not to say ugly, an amorphous mass of ice cream with lots of sauces and toppings falling above and the sides. The project was complex because this ice is unknown in Europe, implying a logic distrust. On the other hand, from the aesthetic criteria about local food, it is not very attractive.

M Barcelona created a creative strategy around this ugliness, starting a “deconstruction” of the ingredients, separating the ice cream from the toppings. The key creative twist was putting two sugar eyes on the top of this ice cream mountain, making it a character-monster that looks you in the eyes and immediately gives it life and personality. From there, the naming came almost alone: Eyescream.

Being confronted with the actual location, the designers realized that the self-service formula would best fit the product. They built wooden low cost boxes for self-service, concentrating all the consumer experience. And they organized a fragmented facade, constructed from a huge sign that has the ability to break down into a number of signs, when open to the public. One for external identity and another, when opened, works as informative product menu.

The project has been shortlisted at the fifth edition of the Restaurant & Bar Design Awards.