Barrio Unido is a private association, formed by restaurants, businesses and organizations, whose purpose is to connect and nurture an authentic community, which develops in harmony and awareness with its environment and collaborates to improve the welfare of those who are part of it.

Before COVID-19, we knew from trends that strengthening communities through their inhabitants, without depending on the government, was necessary to reinforce the well-being of cities and their various neighbourhoods. Now, in the present, we continue in the same direction but we will have to find a way to develop in a different way, by being resilient, changing habits and adapting to a new reality in order to connect.

Beginning the quarantine in Mexico by COVID-19 and assuming the challenges that the “new reality” would mean for the restaurant sector, we were invited by the strategy agency Volar en Ve to jointly develop a pro-bono project for Barrio Unido.

Any creative in Mexico City has a special relationship with the Roma-Condesa neighbourhood, since it is the territory where much of the creative world has developed over the last decade. Many design and architecture studios, as well as restaurants, boutiques of design products and urban policies are developed there.

The challenge was to redefine the purpose of the association and develop a strategy and redesign to position Barrio Unido as a reference within the community. An association that promotes the development of the community and the interaction between its different members.

During the process, we realised that Barrio Unido was made up of very talented and intelligent people, with a broad knowledge of the history and development of the neighbourhood. The council is made up of people who are loved and known by many sectors within the community.

The problem we detected was the lack of strategic planning for the future in order to achieve the goals set. Barrio Unido had emerged as a union of restaurateurs, but the true potential of the association would only be achieved by involving all the sectors that live in the neighbourhood and that have the same value to provoke its development.

The graphic identity had to be a reflection of an avant-garde community. The Roma – Condesa neighbourhoods are known to be two of the most culturally developed colonies within Mexico City. At the same time, the brand’s graphic design should function as an umbrella that can hold all the cultural and gastronomic proposals that coexist in the neighbourhood. The objective was to create an identity with which anyone in the community could identify.

For the repositioning of the association it was vital to create a digital language that would connect with the whole community and provoke interaction.