Mexico meets Japan across AH Work’s colourful identity for Salsa Mutua

Salsa Mutua is a Mexican brand of ‘crispy chilli oil made with salsa and chilli crisp. “We had an initial idea of a name for the sauce: ‘Rayito.’ But we quickly learned that this name was going to be impossible to register as a trademark,” Founders Sebastian and Alejandro tell us. The name they landed on instead comes from the Spanish ‘mutuo,’ meaning something reciprocal between two parts, or something balanced. “It can also be something like a shared experience, like sharing a meal,” they note. “Sebastian’s brother suggested chilli crisp. We noticed the parallelism with that and figured out the similarities with the Asian chilli crisp and the Mexican salsa macha. That is when we decided to create the ‘first Mexican Chili Crisp.’” With the name settled, they commissioned Mexico City-based creative office AH Work, led by Andrés Higueros, to design the identity. “We really liked Andrés’ work,” the founders explain, “especially because we noticed that he had worked on many projects that involved typeface design.” The references Higueros worked from for the identity are Mexican and Japanese, as Salsa Mutua is built on both Mexican and Asian cooking. “The name became the starting point: the idea of exchange, of different ingredients and cultural influences coming together to create something new. That gave us a world to build through the two cats, the custom lettering and the colour combinations,” he details. “We started by looking at the local market and noticed that many sauce brands relied on similar visual cues: chilli illustrations, flames and familiar Mexican imagery. We wanted to move beyond those conventions and tell a story specific to Mutua,” he continues. “On the shelf, we wanted Mutua to feel bold, playful and distinctive, with a personality that would draw people in and make them curious about the sauces.” SALSA is set in Compacta Black Poster. “I drew the MUTUA wordmark from scratch. I was interested in the curved endings of certain Japanese characters and explored how that quality could inform the contours and terminals of the Latin letterforms. Those subtle curves sit within bold, substantial shapes, drawing on the visual strength of Mexican hand-painted signage,” Higueros tells us. “The vertical composition was another deliberate choice, referencing vertical writing in Japanese,” he notes. American Grotesk, restrained and functional, sets the descriptions and supporting information. “Compacta brings the weight and immediate impact I wanted for the main headlines,” he explains. “The system also allows the lettering to be stretched horizontally or vertically, giving the typography an expressive, adaptable role within each composition.”