This project was originally developed between 2000 and 2001 as a thesis proposal to obtain the professional title of Graphic Designer. The research was born from a direct immersion and a real need detected independently at FUPEL Cia. Ltda., the flexible packaging factory where I worked at that time.
The goal was to demonstrate how strategic design and simplification would set the competitive standard in the new millennium. Towards the end of the 90s (between 1998 and 1999), the company had introduced a new logo; however, as it was a process developed in parallel and internally in 2000, this redesign proposal was conceived as a cutting-edge academic exercise that remained behind the scenes, as a testimony of graphic foresight against a corporate structure that had already consolidated its recent identity change.
To support the proposal in 2001, an archaeology of the brand was carried out. Founded on May 10, 1983, the company was born under a physical premise very different from the current one: the manufacture of Paper Bags (acronym origin of the name FU-PEL). Over the years, the company executed a radical shift in its business line, abandoning cellulose to become a giant in the transformation of plastics and flexible packaging (polyethylene extrusion, and complex polypropylene and nylon structures).
Despite having state-of-the-art technology for the time —high-definition flexographic printers with 6 to 10 colors—, the company carried a severe commercial pain: its new visual identity continued to project obsolescence and a marked conceptual gap.
The logo implemented in the late 90s (which the company keeps active to this day) presents three critical problems analyzed in this research:
- Structural Saturation: A system of three-dimensional concentric rings that generated visual noise, severe readability issues at scale, and an aesthetic anachronism inherited from the heavy trends of the previous decade.
- Semiotic Confusion: The rings attempted to suggest the flexibility of plastic, but their heavy geometry transmits mechanical rigidity instead of polymeric fluidity.
- The Cost Impact: In the face of an emerging market of smaller competitors selling at low prices, FUPEL failed to visually justify the premium value of its high technical quality. The brand did not communicate state-of-the-art technology; it communicated antiquity.
