Transport yourself to Sicily with Alivu. This gorgeous olive oil, designed by solid studio, celebrates its Italian roots through and through. We spoke with solid studio to find out more about their holistic approach, cutting out the clutter in design, and more.
Walk us through the design process that you went through for this project.
solid studio: To tell you about our project, we need to take you to Sicily. The Biancolilla Olive is one of the most ancient species in West Sicily. Its plants are precious and not widely known, and the oil they give is of great value. The firm that proposed us a collaboration on this project is keen on giving something special to the public.
This is why Alivu works to tell the story of a traditional Sicilian product, of its preciousness and uniqueness, in an elegant dress, so special and unusual for olive oil. We have learned the stories of these places, the ancient legends about the Greek city of Minoa, where these olives are harvested. As for all our projects, we have come to know the product in each and every of its parts. We believed in it in the first place.
What was one of the biggest goals you set out to achieve with Alivu packaging and how did you accomplish it?
solid studio: Our goal was to celebrate this oil in every parts. It is a precious product and packaging cannot be as precious too. Alivu tells Sicily, its ancient lands, its history and that of an all-Italian product, just in the Sicilian territory.
For Alivu, you worked on naming, brand identity, packaging and editorial design. Tell us a little more about how you decided on some of these unique, special elements in the overall design.
solid studio: Alivu speaks Sicilian in all its parts, the name is a word that in Sicilian dialect means an olive tree; the concentric circles on the packaging and the bottle are the top view of the amphitheater of Eraclea Minoa and the concentric circles in the secular olive tree trunks. It relates the history of the oil that leaves the tree and comes to the fruit. The outer packaging is green as the leaves, rough as the bark, inside the pack that holds the bottle is the colors typical of this rare olive tree, characterized by white, green and lilac nuances.
What was the most challenging part of this project?
solid studio: The bottle was the biggest challenge. We wanted it to be square and white, because it’s an unusual color for such a product: somebody told us that looks like a bottle of perfume!
White speaks of purity, that it looks 100% pure oil, preciousness, elegance, and sophisticated simplicity. To recreate the transparent circles we have had to experiment with different production techniques, the final result is obtained through a complex process, a screen printing and window cleaning, a molecular change of glass color and a hot pressed serigraphy on the bottle.
If you could pick one aspect of the finished design that you like the most or feel especially proud of, what would it be and why?
solid studio: It’s hard to say which exact part we like most.
What we try to do whenever we design something, is to create a product unique but also durable over the time. We think Alivu is an interesting project because it manages to enclose all of its values. We wanted to design the feeling you can feel when you receive a gift, curiosity and surprise, something that makes it special to someone who receives it and something that makes it special what it contains. We think that we have succeeded whenever a person who sees Alivu, is marvelous. Here, we are proud to have planned a moment of amazement!
Share one lesson that you learned while developing the finished product.
solid studio: Michelangelo said that when he sculpted his works, he saw the image already in the marble block and that he was just stripping it of the superfluous.
Here, for Alivu all the answers were in Sicily, in the olive, in the oil, in the amphitheater, in the history of these legendary lands. We never moved, but we got in, we studied it, knew it, lived it. We took the superfluous and left only Sicily.
