Spicewalla Brand

Chai Pani Restaurant Group on 12/04/2018

Spicewalla is chef Meherwan Irani's Asheville-based spice company that roasts and grinds fresh, whole spices to order. The company's brand director Michael Files was inspired by vintage and contemporary Indian packaging for the spice brand's aesthetic. Indian packaging has all sorts of wonderful sub genres, but the particular style embraced by the Spicewalla team is defined by large blocks of color and bold lines — a look that comes from a host of influences converging in Indian packaging: victorian patent medicine design, soviet era propaganda, and the hand-drawn aesthetics of India that often manifest in delightfully bizarre, incongruent and unique illustrations and line work. There is a "horror vacui" that tends to run through all sorts of Indian art and graphics, a fear of empty spaces that is compulsively filled with hilarious phrases and platitudes, hyperbole, random illustrations, patriarchs & matriarchs, gods & goddesses, heroes & heroines. www.spicewallabrand.com