Purkarthofer Eis. Branding "Gelato for Future".

2025

The Purkarthofer family has chosen to embrace the sweet side of life by creating pastries and ice cream since 1982. Located in the small town of Fernitz south of Graz, they are known for their high quality ice cream. The Purkarthofer pavilion and its park are popular meeting places for the local community.

Klaus Purkarthofer’s vision is to contribute to a better future, ensuring that the ingredients used are sourced responsibly and the entire company structure is impact-oriented. By implementing New Work measures all employees have the opportunity to shape the company and contribute their ideas. Creating meaning should be visible and tangible in every part of the company to build an environment where purpose and innovation can thrive together.

"Gelato for Future" is made from the best ingredients: as regionally sourced as possible, from regenerative agriculture or crowd-farming; using zero waste measures and New Work while keeping a sense of tradition. Our goal was to combine all the innovative measures in a colorful brand design that captures the joy of eating ice cream. What a sweet challenge!

Illustration is a great way to communicate all those different initiatives in a playful way. We created a set of versatile, colorful patches that allow quick identification of various topics and can easily be expanded. The new logo shares the illustrative style with two heads facing each other capturing the sentiment of "people coming together over ice cream".

While the body text font pays tribute to the history of Purkarthofer, the bold headline font acts as a strong counterpart that brings in the new era. This contrast helps to communicate the DNA of Purkarthofer – long standing quality combined with passion and courage for the future.

A brand design as delicious as the first scoop of ice cream in early spring? With a color palette that looks like the ice cream display itself you can almost taste the creamy vanilla-yellow or the fresh basil-green.

The challenge of rebranding Purkarthofer was to keep their more traditional client-base while designing for a completely new company identity and production process. We needed to communicate all their initiatives and grand vision for the future to a younger, more environmentally conscious target group, while also honoring tradition and staying attractive to their existing, partially more conservative, community.

We chose to use a brand voice that felt familiar to all long-standing Purkarthofer enthusiasts, while also engaging a younger audience – making it clear to both groups that they are ready for the future. Our approach was to use brief, funny bits of text, primarily written in Styrian dialect conveying "Schmäh" (funny slang words) that resonates with both young and old. It also feels a bit like Klaus is talking to you personally – welcoming, funny, approachable.

It was crucial for us to experience the Purkarthofer magic and its transformation firsthand. The ice cream pavilion serves as the primary point of contact with the target audience. We used the available space to engage customers and to inform them about all initiatives. From ice cream cups and napkins to merchandise for employees – the vision of the ice cream revolution is omnipresent. Stop by when you are in the area and enjoy some "Gelato for Future" – that tastes even better after a conversation with the people making it!

Services

Brand Strategy
Text
Brand Design
Web Design

Credits

Christian Leban. Concept, Graphic Design, Text, Web Design, Illustration
Tessa S. Huber. Concept, Graphic Design, Text, Web Design
Sophia Stöhr. Concept, Graphic Design, Text, Motion Design
Christian Hörzer. Web Development

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