- Designer: Hey Ruca
- Client: McDonald’s
- Category: Packaging Design — Food & Beverage
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Project Brief: Create packaging design for McDonald’s McMamalona promotion that celebrates Mexican-American and lowrider culture through bold colors, hand-painted lettering, and custom truck artwork.
Food and beverage packaging that celebrates a regional subculture lives or dies on authenticity. Hey Ruca builds McDonald's McMamalona set around lowrider and custom-truck culture, running Chicano airbrush art across a clear cup and a full meal box.
The airbrush art is the whole draw. A candy-red lowered pickup, gold wire wheels, yellow roses, and a sunset skyline pull straight from the boardwalk mural and car-show tradition the promotion honors.
The clear cup pulls a neat trick. Printing the truck and city scene on transparent film lets the drink and ice sit behind the art, so the lowrider looks like it floats in the cup.
The box carries the story across every panel. Cracked brick, dice, palm trees, and the crying-eyes mural motif wrap the die-line, and the golden arches fold into the scene so the brand rides along with the culture instead of stamping over it.
The set rewards collecting. Three cup designs and matching boxes give fans across Northern California and the Central Valley a reason to hunt the whole run, which turns disposable packaging into something people keep.
