A water-carrier, clay jugs and summer visitors.

Font Vella is a natural mineral water from Sant Hilari Sacalm, a town in the hills of the province of Girona, in Catalonia. Its name is Catalan for “old fountain,” and Spanish Wikipedia says the water of the spring of that name became popular in the town in the late 19th century, when a water-carrier, Jaume Traveries, known as Jaumet del Flabiol, sold it in clay jugs to the summer visitors. A 2015 press dossier from the company that then owned the brand, Aguas Font Vella y Lanjarón, calls him the first distributor of Font Vella; the same dossier dates his rounds to 1878 in one passage and to 1898 in its timeline.

From a village trade, the water moved to the city. The dossier says the spring water was first analysed for bacteria in 1917 and that home delivery in Barcelona, in eight-litre carboys, began in 1918. The business built on it, Font Vella, S.A., was founded in 1943, according to both the dossier and Spanish Wikipedia, and construction of the Sant Hilari bottling plant still in use began in 1966, the company says.

Spanish Wikipedia says the water from the original spring, which it calls the Sacalm spring, is bottled at Sant Hilari Sacalm. The company today describes the setting as Les Guilleries, a protected natural area, and says Font Vella is bottled directly at its springs.

Levité, Kids bottles and recycled plastic.

Font Vella has long sold more than a single bottle of still water. The 2015 dossier lists Font Vella Sensación alongside the Levité drinks, launched in 2013, which mix the mineral water with fruit juice; the first flavours were lemon and apple, with orange and kiwi following in 2014 and pineapple in 2015. The same year brought Font Vella Kids, a range of bottles for children, which the dossier presents as part of a packaging programme of formats for different people and moments of the day.

The material of the bottle is the part of Font Vella’s design story best recorded outside its own pages. In 2009 its 1.5-litre bottle became, in the dossier’s words, the first natural mineral water pack in Spain to contain 25% recycled PET; Spanish Wikipedia, citing the packaging-recovery body Ecoembes, calls it the first in the sector. A 6.25-litre carboy with the same recycled share followed in 2010, the dossier says. In 2014 Aguas Font Vella y Lanjarón received a European Business Award for the Environment in the Spanish section of the scheme, Corresponsables reported.

Font Vella now says it is part of ReNueva, a project Danone began in 2019 to recover drinks packaging used away from home, with sorting plants at Montcada i Reixac, near Barcelona, and Noblejas, in Toledo, and partners including Ecoembes. It says the great majority of its packs, more than 85%, would be made entirely of recycled PET in 2025, and that its smaller bottles now have caps that stay attached.

The latest redesign came with an anniversary. In 2025 Font Vella marked what its website calls 150 years of history with a new bottle, which it describes as modern and elegant, and a new brand image that it says fuses tradition and quality. For the occasion it worked with names including Ana Jarén, Los Bravú, 72 Kilos, Eating Patterns, Pepe Baena and Ana Milán, who, the company says, each made their own interpretation of people gathering around a table.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all soft drink and water names from Spain and Italy: La Casera, Trina, Font Vella, Bezoya, Aquarius, Lemonsoda and Levissima. Spanish and Italian soft drink and water brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food and drink groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner bar to a supermarket shelf.

A soft drink or water brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a bottle, a label, a name and the drink it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its bottling or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

BSN, Danone, Sigüenza and Lanjarón.

Font Vella has belonged to the Danone group for half a century. The 2015 dossier and Spanish Wikipedia say Font Vella, S.A. joined the French group BSN in 1974; BSN took the Danone name in 1994. Aguas de Lanjarón, owner of the Andalusian water Lanjarón, joined BSN in 1993, the dossier says, and the two Spanish water companies were managed together from 1997.

A second spring came next. In 2001 Font Vella bought Fuentes de Cutamilla, owner of a spring and plant at Sigüenza, in the province of Guadalajara, and since 2002, Spanish Wikipedia says, water from Sigüenza, of a different mineral composition, has also been sold as Font Vella; the dossier calls this its “multi-spring” project. In August 2005 the consumer association FACUA asked for Font Vella water that did not come from the original spring to be withdrawn from sale, Spanish Wikipedia records. The company now names two protected areas as Font Vella’s sources: Les Guilleries, at Sant Hilari Sacalm, and the Barranco del Río Dulce natural park, at Sigüenza.

In December 2006 Font Vella, S.A. was merged by absorption with Aguas de Lanjarón, S.A., creating Aguas Font Vella y Lanjarón, based in Barcelona. In 2016 that company was renamed Aguas Danone, Spanish Wikipedia says, citing Crónica Global. Font Vella appears today on Danone España’s website beside Lanjarón and the sparkling water Fonter.

For a design guide, Font Vella shows how a water named after a village fountain carried a local story into a national brand, and how much of its visible change has happened in the bottle itself, from recycled plastic to the 2025 anniversary pack. Compare Bezoya, the mineral water from Segovia, and Vöslauer, from Lower Austria. For this guide we use spring blue, deep navy and pale stone with a clean geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Font Vella’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.