Mama Rocks

We were excited to work with Mama Rocks, a Kenyan food brand known for making African food feel fresh and contemporary and fun. Their menu brings together flavours from across the continent, from West African suya, North African harissa and kachumbari.

For their range of sauces, we were asked to create packaging that could carry that same energy. Each sauce draws from a different African country, so the packaging needed to celebrate those individual stories while still feeling like one unmistakably Mama Rocks collection.

Mama Rocks already had a strong visual identity: bold, graphic and predominantly black and white. But for the sauce range, we wanted to introduce more colour and personality.

The challenge was finding a way to bring colour into the system without losing what made Mama Rocks recognisable in the first place. We needed the packaging to feel vibrant and expressive, while still belonging to the same brand.

Each sauce had a story behind it. We explored the visual culture of Ghana, Nigeria, Northern Sudan, South Africa and Kenya, looking at patterns, textiles, colours and traditional visual references from each place. We also looked at the flavour, ingredients and heat of each sauce, using these cues to shape how each one could feel visually.

Rather than simply decorating the packaging with cultural references, we looked for details that could give each sauce its own character: some fiery and energetic, others playful or fresh, while keeping the whole collection connected through one visual system.

To keep the Mama Rocks wit alive, we introduced custom typography and hand-drawn details across the packaging. The result was a colourful system that still felt distinctly Mama Rocks.

We kept most of the packaging black and white to maintain the bold visual identity Mama Rocks was already known for. To bring the story of each sauce into the system, we introduced a strip of pattern at the bottom of each pack, drawing from the visual culture of its country of origin.

We also wanted to keep the witty, playful spirit of Mama Rocks alive to do this, we used playful typography and hand-drawn details brought personality to the labels, giving the range a sense of character without taking away from the clean, graphic identity.