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El Encanto

Name, brand, strategy and everything that carries it, for a wine garden inside a 250-year-old house in Quito’s historic center.

A brand board on beige: the colours as a grid of blocks, the wordmark in beige on deep brown, the symbol on gold, a Lindsey line on grass green, and photographs of candles on wine bottles and of the garden at night.
The brand board: the wordmark, the symbol and Lindsey on the colours, with photographs of the house.

The place

Behind a wooden door, a garden in the middle of a 250-year-old house: wine first, then the food that goes with it. A full engagement: name, brand, strategy, the website, menus, signage and the little things that touch a guest, social media, photography, and the operations app the team runs service on.

The courtyard at night, lit by two hanging lanterns against yellow walls.
A red wall with a bar shelf of bottles, and the garden behind it under string lights.
A dark corridor with red walls and candles on a table in the foreground.
The house: the courtyard, the bar and the garden, a corridor.

The strategy

Before any drawing, a strategy deck. It found two extremes in how Quito presents wine, food and heritage, formality and familiarity, and put El Encanto in the middle: “warmth without pretense, sophistication without distance.”

A black deck page titled Context: a garden behind a quiet wooden door, inside a 250-year-old house.
A black deck page titled Essence: a moment of calm inside ancient walls.
A black deck page titled Visual direction: colours drawn from stone, wine and candlelight.
Three pages from the strategy deck: context, essence, visual direction.

Exploring the mark

The first round went wide: seventeen directions, from stacked serifs to a script with an orchid over it. The orchid script went forward and carried the first posts and posters.

An event post on cream: a black lace mask, FIESTA DE MÁSCARAS, 31 de octubre 2025, with the orchid logo at the top.
A poster hanging on a grey wall: the orchid wordmark in cream on crumpled dark green paper.
The first generation in use: an event post, and a poster (mockup).

The mark

The identity then moved to a hand-lettered script. Its “t” stands up as a cross, and on its own it is the symbol, at the top of the website and the menu.

The El Encanto wordmark: elencanto in a hand-lettered script over JARDÍN DE VINOS.The El Encanto wordmark: elencanto in a hand-lettered script over JARDÍN DE VINOS.
The El Encanto symbol: the tall cross-shaped t from the wordmark.The El Encanto symbol: the tall cross-shaped t from the wordmark.
The wordmark, and its “t” as the symbol.
Colourways from the palette.

Colour

Six colours from the house: browns and grass green for the room, gold and beige for candlelight, red as the accent. Stacked into a grid of blocks, they make a pattern the brand paints and prints.

The palette as a grid of blocks in gold, browns, red and grass green.
The block grid.

Type

Arboria in two weights for the words, Lindsey for the handwritten touches: a special on a post, a flourish on a card.

Arboria BlackCARTA DE VINOS, set in Arboria Black.CARTA DE VINOS, set in Arboria Black.
Arboria BookMalbec, Mendoza, 9 / 34, set in Arboria Book.Malbec, Mendoza, 9 / 34, set in Arboria Book.
LindseyLos miércoles también se brinda, set in Lindsey.Los miércoles también se brinda, set in Lindsey.
Outlined from the fonts. The Lindsey line is from a post.

The painted world

For posts and the website, oil paintings in the brand’s colours.

The block grid painted in oils: gold, red, brown and green rectangles.
An oil painting of a garden table with wine glasses and plates under trees.
An oil painting of a green carved wooden door opening onto a stone passage.
Generated images, art-directed for the brand.

In use

Posts set in Arboria over photographs of the house, the script on top. Signs, labels and a menu card in the same system.

A post: candles on a red wall, the opening hours in white Arboria.
A post: wine bottles behind a frosted panel with the wordmark and the weekend hours.
A post: a lantern in the courtyard at night, Jueves y Viernes with the hours.
A post: a lantern over a table in the courtyard, Sábados with the hours.
Posts.
Two wine bottles with white and black labels carrying the script wordmark, beside two glasses and a corkscrew.
A paper menu card with the wordmark on a wooden table beside a wine bottle and a glass.
A round hanging sign in red with the script wordmark in beige.
Wine labels, a menu card, the sign in red. Mockups.

The website and the app

The website and its QR menu ship from the same codebase as the operations app; its white-label version is Mantel. The brand and the site are live, and the app runs the room every service.

The website home on a phone: the symbol and wordmark over a photo of the house, with buttons for the menu and reservations.
The QR menu on a phone: the symbol at the top, kitchen and bar tabs, dishes with prices and wine pairings.
The app's order entry screen on a phone.
The app's kitchen display screen on a phone.
The site’s home and menu, the app’s orders and kitchen.