Shapes from the terra

With a centuries-old dedication to agriculture in the western region of Granada, the Blanco family produces supreme extra virgin olive oil. In 2022, the family approached Spanish design studio Buenaventura, founded in 2017, to create a new visual identity to ‘signify a graphic redefinition of the brand’.

Cristina Chamorro from the Buenaventura team comments on the collaborative approach for this project: ‘Working with families that have been involved in a sector for multiple generations, such as this one, always eases and enriches the creative process.’ She says that one of the initial sources of inspiration for the Blanco packaging stemmed from the studio’s fascination with how the family ‘selected the finest plots of the Fuente Alcaide estate each harvest to produce their limited edition, high-end extra virgin oils.’

Buenaventura approached the packaging as a blank canvas upon which the plots of the estate are referenced through expressive shapes – influenced by the cut-outs that Henri Matisse created late in his life. Buenaventura also noticed that these plots were ‘adorned with manually placed stickers’ that punctuated the artisanal production processes of the operation. These solid-coloured, cut-out stickers on Tintoretto Gesso Greaseproof FSC™ represent each selected plot, and these are the main feature on the bottles and packaging for the olive oil, along with black screen-printed type on a white lacquered glass bottle.

Inspiration for the colour palette came from a surprising place: 1970s Land Rover catalogues. This iconic vehicle is synonymous with rural work in southern Spain, and Buenaventura says the designers believed ‘this would bring authenticity and a sense of rootedness to the project’. The visual system created reflects the Andalusian countryside.

Buenaventura Esudio has worked with many other Andalusian clients including Caviar Riofrío (see Codebreaking caviar).