Brand and packaging -
Olha o Sol (Sunscreen line)
Categories
Brand, Packaging, Editorial
Client
Academic Project - Olha o Sol Sunscreen Line for Leão Tea
Place / Year
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil / 2023, revised 2026
Services
Brand Identity / Naming / Visual, Sonic and Palatable Identity / Editorial and Brand Guidelines
An academic exercise briefed on developing a cosmetics line for a brand from an unrelated category. The chosen brand was Leão, a Brazilian tea brand and a cultural icon in Rio de Janeiro. Its toasted mate grew into the company's main product once it became part of everyday beach life.
Street vendors sell it by shouting "Olha o Mate!" ("Get your mate!") along the sand, and the line takes its name from that call: "Olha o Sol" ("Look at the sun"). The name points to the campaign's cause: sun protection and skin cancer awareness, launched alongside Brazil's national Dezembro Laranja (Orange December) campaign.
In which contexts do consumers buy Matte Leão, and what adjacent needs do they have? To answer it, I combined six in-depth interviews with a 20-respondent survey, content analysis and desk research, using secondary sources to offset the limited reach of the primary data. The beach came out as the dominant context, with 89% of respondents drinking mate there and three in four associating the brand with summer and the shore. The habit is passed down through families, and mate is consistently framed as the healthy alternative to soft drinks.
The research tied the brand to nostalgia: beach, youth, friends, family. The identity translates this into desaturated colours drawn from Leão's own palette (orange, yellow, blue), 1970s–80s typography, brown-toned filters that also nod to the mate itself, and grainy textures that evoke sand, heat and skin. The wordmark uses a customised cut of Cheee, a bubble form that reads as sun and appeals to adults and children alike. Savate serves as the secondary typeface, as it is more geometric and contemporary, closer to the brand's current visual language
