Carmen's Best Brand Refresh
Reimagining a beloved gourmet ice cream brand
Client
The Laguna Creamery, Inc.
Service
Visual Identity, Packaging, Environment
Industry
Food & Beverage, Retail
Collaborators
CIA Bootleg Manila, Headroom CDV
From the very beginning, Carmen’s Best was a labor of love, a story of fresh milk turned into ice cream by a father for his daughter. That origin story, simple and sincere, became the emotional foundation of everything the brand would eventually grow into.
When Metro Pacific Agro Ventures acquired a controlling stake in 2022, the brand began its evolution from a beloved premium ice cream into a full, proudly local dairy portfolio. This evolution required more than a redesign; it called for a brand system that could scale across categories while remaining true to its origins.
The Context
The challenge was not simply a redesign. It was the construction of a brand system that could scale across ice cream, milk, yogurt, and future categories without losing coherence or warmth.
We worked with brand strategy partner CIA Bootleg Manila, who defined the audience as the Everyday Gourmand: someone indulgent yet intentional, discerning but not snobbish, who values the quality of a product and the story behind it. The design needed to speak to them across every touchpoint while also maintaining a consistent identity.
Milk as the Hero
We started with one question: what is Carmen's Best actually about? The answer was milk. Not just as a category descriptor, but as a source of indulgence, of nourishment, and care. Because of this, the milk drop became the central visual element of the identity. It became a flexible, expressive mark that anchors the system across every product and every variant.
It is partner with a creamy, rippled backdrop mirrors the richness of the ice cream itself. The milk drop frames the variant name. Classic flavors use white lids; premium flavors use gold. The logic is clear, the language consistent, and the effect unmistakably Carmen's Best.
A System Built to Scale
The real innovation of the Carmen's Best refresh is best seen in the flexibility of the system as a whole. Distinct, colorful patterns differentiate each flavor, making the range easy to navigate from the top of a chest freezer or the front of a standing one. Limited edition lines and the no-sugar Lite range each carry their own tailored design language, but all are anchored to the same milk graphic. For the milk bottles, the design references nostalgic glass milk crates and a nod to origin and freshness. Shrink-wrapped labels and a transparent milk drop keep the focus on purity and the product itself.
Even elements in their physical store, whether it’s the freezer, the uniform, the freezer bag or the store itself, keeps the system in mind. The milk drop is present in all without giving the feeling of redundancy, and the supporting icons and illustrations are used to further highlight the simplicity and freshness of the brand.
Indulgence You Can See
The textures and finishes across the packaging are drawn from the visual language of luxury to give the everyday gourmand something she is genuinely proud to hold and to share. The design signals that this is a product worth choosing. Not just in taste, but in what it says about the person who chose it.
A complete visual toolkit containing layout principles, color systems, and photography direction, was developed alongside the various materials, giving the internal team the means to produce consistent marketing, retail, and digital content without external reliance. The brand now speaks with one voice across the shelf, the freezer, and the feed.
