The times where the word “regional” implied an almost automatic exclusion of the design concept are gone. The three examples below prove us that nowadays both are better together than apart. 

At least, this is the point of view Daniel Roldão, António Policarpo and Rita and João Soares. When António Policarpo started his business - Boa Boca Gourmet -, he detected a huge flaw in the market: “there were good products, without an image at the same level”. So, as a designer, he tried to stop this path, taking for granted that “the design would work as the engine that was missing in this items”. 

Though, he soon realized that the design benefits were often unknown. “People couldn’t tell the difference, the big change”, he explained. For this reason, in the beginning of the project he didn’t know where he was going - the path was unknown, such as the final destination. 

Fábrica de Rebuçados de Portalegre  (Portalegre Sweet Factory) marketing director, Daniel Roldão, agrees, but he also warns that “the most important is always the product”. Consequently, Roldão’s main worry was always to “improve the product, finding the original sweets recipe”. Having done this, the next step was to adapt the recipe to a “main production system without losing the original flavour, improving also the main ingredients, like a sugar that doesn’t affect the teeth”. 

João Soares, from the country house and winery Herdade Nova da Malhadinha, is more extreme, saying that “the packaging should only be thought in the end”, after the final product is conceived. In what concerns to design, this entrepreneur defends that the main goal must be always to do “something different from what already exists in the market”. “The innovation aspects of the products are identified by the market, that recognises or not the success of the initiative”. 

Also from Herdade Nova da Malhadinha, Rita Soares explains the concept implemented in the production of their wines. As the main goal was always to produce a top quality product and not in big volumes, the “fact that the label had to had a message acquired an even bigger importance”.  So, sick of the “trivial labels, without any special message”, they decided to adopt their children pictures to the labels of the wines produced by the family, confident that with this decision they would have the “packaging according to the concept foreseen”. But the consistency was always something to worry about. So, this was something that was “worked by an agency”, also with the purpose of “following the main market trends”.

So, design can give a company the projection that, otherwise, mainly due to the market where they are working, they would hardly have. António Policarpo believes that “design is almost the only way of a small company to be recognised, being accompanied, of course, by a product that grabs people”.

Over the past few years, design conquered an importance that turned it into an indispensable subject in the production and conception of a product. From now on it contributes decisively to the growth and recognition of the enterprises, regardless the market where they are based.