Conduru

Agrícola Conduru is a cacao farm in Ilhéus, in the state of Bahia. It is where Dengo, the Brazilian chocolate brand, was born. The farm balances productivity, quality and environmental preservation, and supports small producers in the region. We created the visual identity, the art direction and the farm’s website, in partnership with Barro de Chão.

Brazilian cacao comes with a ready-made imaginary, made of romance and nostalgia. Ilhéus is the town of Jorge Amado’s cacao novels, and that literature still shapes how the region is pictured from the outside. Conduru is not that: it is a contemporary operation that works with people and with forest at the same time. The identity had to speak of tradition without turning into folklore.

The identity started from local knowledge and from the richness of the nature around the farm. Tradition and innovation, aesthetics and responsibility inside one system, without either serving as decoration for the other.

In practice, a visual language that speaks as much about the cacao as about the people who grow it, applied from the brand through to the farm’s website.

Conduru gained an image of its own, one that speaks of agroecology, of small producers and of a possible future for Brazilian cacao.