Nihilo’s contrasting identity and bottle for Casa Malka shapes a world between rawness and royalty

Israeli branding agency Nihilo have crafted the identity for emerging tequila brand Casa Malka, capturing the confidence of its name (directly translating as ‘House of the Queen’) in a distinctly modern context. Exuding contrast from the get-go, the visual language encapsulates a tension between two contrary states; hard and soft. Through this typographic and structural interplay, the subsequent tone is refined and intriguing, aiming to appeal to a vast audience. “While the tequila itself was being developed, we helped fabricate the entire brand conception and implementation,” Co-founder & Creative Director Emunah Winer tells us, determining the bottle’s size, materials and manufacturing. “We were extremely particular with the number of embellishments on the bottle,” she adds, “as we wanted a very limited combination of materials and colours,” conscious of maintaining the transparent theme of contrast. A theme also apparent in Nihilo’s choice of typefaces, with the agency opting for Displaay’s Azeret Mono for the wordmark and headline typeface. “We used Gimlet Display Compressed for body and supporting copy,” Winer adds, again creating a calligraphic contrast to Azeret’s more rigid letterforms. “It felt like the combination of an ancient script and an industrial, controlled typewriter font,” she continues, “which we also liked because it felt just weird enough to startle people.” Together, the pair bounce off one another effortlessly, creating moments of tension and typographic surprise across the brand’s touchpoints. Sitting closely alongside the bold application of typefaces is the inclusion of Casa Malka’s own illustrative ‘Queen’ character. “The illustration is seen primarily on the gold wax seal on the bottle cap and on branded print collateral,” Winer details, “across assets, it’s the stamp of the ‘Queendom,’” she explains, a copy element and literary motif laced throughout the brand. “The idea behind the emblem is to provide contrast to the harsher elements of the brand,” Winer remarks, noting the typographic and monochromatic palette as ‘harsher’ devices. Furthermore, the illustrative figure, and indeed its contrast with Casa Malka’s typographic treatment, fortuitously embodies the taste profile of the tequila itself – royal and restrained.