Brachia olive oil
(marketed in Croatia)

Producer: Tridvajedan
Material: Ceramic, with inner metal funnel cap and outer wood cap
Package style: Container is shaped as an olive fruit, with a neck shaped as an olive branch
Description: Designed as both a gift and souvenir

Designers’ critiques

Fabulous! I'd put this package on my kitchen counter in a heartbeat. It's a cross between a kitchen accessory and a fine piece of china. The design is so beautiful, it’s certainly not going next to the bottle of Crisco oil in my pantry.

This is an excellent example of a packaging structure working hard to differentiate from the competition on the shelf and to deliver a brand promise. Typically, olive oil is packaged in tall, clear glass and has a golden hue. Here, the white ceramic bottle conveys purity and lightness. The green leaves suggest natural and fresh.

There's not much copy on the packaging because it doesn't need it. A quick glance at the package easily defines the product’s visual representation of an olive fruit. To the consumer, it communicates premium, pure, unadulterated olive oil. A real winner, both graphically and strategically.

Rick Barrack, Chief Creative Officer, Partner
CBX (www.cbx.com), New York, NY

What makes this package design so beautiful and iconic is its simplicity. Beginning with the structure, a pure simple white shape that resembles an olive, and ending with the hang tag with minimal graphics.

The white package sans graphics communicates purity. As with brands such as Method, the design is attractive enough to display on a table while entertaining guests. The green, olive leaf-shaped hangtag adds just a hint of color to this package, making it even more dynamic and beautiful.

While the brandmark itself is not particularly strong or ownable, the unusual structure of this package speaks volumes and provides an iconic brand shape. The secondary package, a white box with a simple texture, just hints at the product/contents with an olive leaf, giving the consumer just enough information, while leaving the rest up to the imagination.

Tammy Vaserstein, Creative Director and Partner
Moxie TM Inc. (www.moxietm.com), New York, NY

This package blends modern and fresh together while still functioning hard in support of how the product must live inside the vessel. This occurs with no light or filtered light. The shape of the vessel and texture on the outer box give us the place this product comes from, its essence, but not in the literal way we see on many of the products in this category.

Improvements? Without deep understanding of horticulture and plant life, a consumer would have a difficult time knowing what this product is without studying it in detail. Tell us what it is—larger—somewhere on the package.

Give the consumer some idea of the shape within—big, small, subtle, just a hint in case the product must function totally in the box.

Jon Urban, Partner and Creative Director
Eight Marketing Communications (www.why8.com), Chicago, IL