The Novanta 90-seconds mark shown flour white on carbone beside carbone on flour whiteThe mark, on both of its grounds

The challenge

Every pizzeria on earth sells the same three things: a script logotype, kraft paper, and a story about tradition. The category is so uniform that a genuinely excellent Neapolitan kitchen and a frozen supermarket brand reach for the same visual vocabulary. Novanta bakes one pizza, to one spec, in ninety seconds — and had no way to say so that did not sound like everyone else.

The solution

We stopped selling the tradition and started selling the number. Ninety seconds at 485°C is the entire product claim, so the mark is the duration itself: 90 with a seconds prime, the zero drawn as a true circle. The system runs cold — flour white, carbone, steel — so the only warm thing anywhere is the pizza. Ember appears exclusively where heat is literal.

A three-panel street hoarding on a grey brick wall: a giant 90-seconds mark, an oven photograph with a pizza on the peel, and NOVANTA above the line TEMP 485°C.At fifty metres the whole proposition is a number and a temperature.
A flat menu sheet with the 90-seconds mark, one item reading MARGHERITA and the price 9One pizza. The whole menu is a single line.
A white cook jacket hung on a steel hook against a grey wall, a docket clipped to its pocketThe uniform reads as system even on the hook.
Flat artwork for a pizza box lid: the 90-seconds mark above an ember temperature bandThe box argues with every kraft box in the category.
A black insulated delivery box standing on wet pavement, printed with the 90-seconds markThe last cold surface between the oven and the door.
An open white pizza box on a steel counter, the temperature band printed inside the lidUncoated white board, one mark, one temperature.
A pizzeria shopfront at night, the 90-seconds mark on the glass, the oven glowing insideAt fifty metres the whole proposition is a number.
The mouth of a domed pizza oven glowing orange, a steel peel sliding a pizza insideEmber appears where it belongs: at 485°C.
A blistered Neapolitan pizza on a steel tray beside a paper docket reading TIME 90 secondsThe only warm thing in the entire identity is the thing you eat.

Project Information

Walk down any street in any city and the pizzerias are typographically indistinguishable. Script logotype, warm kraft, a tricolore somewhere, a sentence about a family recipe. The signals are so universal that they have stopped carrying information — a thirty-year-old Neapolitan kitchen and a frozen brand launched last quarter look the same from across the road.

Novanta had a genuinely unusual proposition and no way to say it. One pizza. One spec. Ninety seconds at 485°C, which is not marketing language but the actual physics of a Neapolitan bake — the reason the cornicione blisters and the base stays soft.

So the number became the brand. The mark is the duration written out: 90 followed by a seconds prime, set tight in a heavy grotesque, with the zero drawn as a true circle so it reads as the pizza it describes. It works at signage scale and it works stamped into the lid of a box.

The system runs deliberately cold. Flour white, carbone, steel — the palette of a kitchen rather than a dining room. Ember appears in exactly one register: where heat is literal. The oven mouth, the timer, the temperature on the docket. Nothing else in the identity is warm, which leaves the pizza as the only hot thing in any photograph.

The docket closes the argument. Every order prints the actual bake time of the pizza that was made for it — not a slogan but a measurement. A brand built on a number should be willing to show the number, and a claim you can check is worth more than a story about a grandmother.

CAIO BARRETO

Creative Direction:
Caio Barreto

Design:
Júlia Bertoldi, Nara Vasconcelos

Packaging:
Kwame Osei

Environmental Graphics:
Marina Yuki

Strategy & Copywriting:
Priya Raghunathan

Image Direction:
Yuri Kagawa

Project Management:
Helena Braga

Fonts:
Aeonik Fono, ABC Diatype Mono — CoType / Dinamo

Year:
2026

Brand Identity · Concept

Self-initiated concept work. Novanta is not a client of CAIO BARRETO. Imagery generated, not photographed.