The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2021–2022
Unto's low-budget Tuscan olive oil launch: bold graphic kit, disposable-camera photos
Tuscan brand Unto launches on a shoestring with a bold kit-of-parts identity and photos shot on disposable cameras by its own harvest team.
Unto
What it had to solve
Unto, a new Italian organic olive oil brand and producer with a local, ecological focus, was launching its product and its brand simultaneously on a small budget, and the identity had to work on the shop shelf, on Instagram and in campaign imagery at once.
How it works
Unto is a new Italian organic olive oil brand and producer on a mission to revive ancient, abandoned olive fields in rural Tuscany. Because the brand and its first product launched at the same time on a small budget, every design euro had to work across the bottle, the website, Instagram and campaign imagery at once — there was no money for separate campaigns or an expensive photo production.
Studio Bergini answered with a kit of bold, impactful graphic parts rather than a single fixed design: a wordmark, a story graphic and an illustration of two olives doubling as eyes, all drawn in crude typography based on metal type and printed with overprinting spot colours. The two olives gave the small rural brand an instant, likeable face on crowded supermarket shelves, and the bottle became the main identity application, supported by a website and an Instagram presence built from the same parts.
The campaign imagery followed the same logic of turning limits into character: instead of hiring a photographer, Unto kitted out its harvesting team with disposable cameras and let them shoot the first harvest and farm life themselves. The grainy, low-fidelity film photographs gave customers a genuinely unvarnished window into the workings of the business, with honesty and romance in the same frame.
The work was shortlisted in the Branding discipline at the D&AD Awards 2022 and went to the top of the Packaging-Label Awards and Total Image categories at the London International Olive Oil Competitions, and it was written up by design publications including BP&O and The Dieline. No sales figures are recorded in the sources read.
Why it lands
- A kit of reusable graphic parts lets one small design budget flex across bottle, website, Instagram and print, so recognition accumulates without commissioning new artwork for each touchpoint.
- Giving the actual harvest crew disposable cameras turns a zero-budget constraint into authenticity: the images are irreplaceably real because they come from the people and place the brand is about.
- The two olives doubling as eyes give an abstract rural mission an instantly likeable, memorable face that stands out against the refined conventions of premium olive oil packaging.
- Honest, tactile choices — metal-type letterforms, overprinted spot colours, greaseproof labels — make austerity read as deliberate craft rather than as cheapness.
What it did
The kit-of-parts identity established the brand from the first bottle, website and Instagram post, while the disposable-camera snaps gave the campaign a low-fi authenticity no studio shoot could fake. The work was shortlisted at the D&AD Awards 2022 in Branding, topped the Packaging-Label and Total Image categories at the London International Olive Oil Competitions, and was covered by design press including BP&O and The Dieline.
What you can take
When the budget is tiny, spend it on a small kit of strong, repeatable parts and put the business's own people in front of the lens: scarcity becomes an aesthetic and honesty becomes the brand.
Since then
Dated 2021 in Studio Bergini's own project archive, the identity was shortlisted at the D&AD Awards 2022 and topped two categories at the London International Olive Oil Competitions; the packaging was reviewed by BP&O in December 2022 and by The Dieline in November 2021. Studio Bergini reports that the harvesting team continued enthusiastically using the disposable cameras after launch, so the campaign imagery kept growing as the business did. No revenue or volume figures are recorded in the sources read.
Sources
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