Packaging and label design

Packaging is the only piece of communication your customer actually holds. On a crowded shelf, a label has a few seconds to get picked — and no second chance. We design packaging and labels for the people who live off that moment: wineries, craft breweries, dairies, food producers, product brands. From concept to final artwork to a managed print run.

We work from Sardinia, where the product is often extraordinary and the pack rarely does it justice. Since 2018 we have delivered over 200 projects, and on packaging we hold one firm belief: beautiful is not enough — it has to be recognisable. Beauty makes someone pick up the bottle once. Recognition makes them buy it again.

What's included

Packaging is never one object. It is a system of surfaces that must tell the same story.

Labels for wine, beer and food. Front, back and capsule for wine. Can and bottle for beer. Jars, wraps and packs for cheese, preserves and baked goods. One label or the full range, with a system that keeps each product distinguishable at a glance.

Primary and secondary packaging. Boxes, cartons, sleeves, pouches, bags, gift packs. The primary pack protects and presents; the secondary one ships, stacks and gets gifted. We design them together, because your customer sees them together.

Coordinated stationery. Business cards, letterhead, email signature and printed materials aligned with the brand, from €350. If the label says one thing and the business card another, the brand breaks.

Print-ready artwork. Die-cut paths, bleeds, overprint, separated Pantone inks, finishing specs. Final artwork is where good designs fail — we prepare it to your printer's specifications, not to a generic template.

Print management. If you want, we run the whole flow: printer selection, quotes, colour proofs, first-run check. One contact from brief to delivered pallet.

How we work

Packaging has a constraint digital design doesn't: once printed, there is no deploy to fix it. Every step exists to remove risk before the press starts.

1. Brief and constraints. We start from the physical product: bottle or jar format, material, print run, budget, sales channels. We collect the mandatory information your consultant has defined — ingredients, alcohol content, lot — because it belongs in the layout from day one, not the last.

2. Research and concept. We go look at the actual shelf, physical or online, where your product will compete. We study the category codes — what everyone does — to decide where to break and where to reassure. You get 2–3 creative directions, mounted on mockups of the real format, never on an abstract rectangle.

3. Development. Once a direction is chosen, we take it all the way: typography, illustration or photography, information hierarchy, back label, roll-out across the rest of the range. Revisions are included and agreed before we start.

4. Artwork and proof. We prepare the files to the printer's specifications: die-cut, bleeds, spot colours, finishes. Then we ask for a colour proof. That is where problems surface — better on one proof sheet than on ten thousand labels.

5. Print and delivery. We coordinate the printer through to delivery and check the first run. You receive the open files and the print-ready PDFs: reprinting is yours, with no dependency on us.

Tools and stack

Projects are built in Adobe Illustrator for vector paths and die-cuts, Photoshop for imagery, InDesign for multi-page coordinated materials. Critical colours — a brand's red, the green of an organic range — travel as Pantone inks, with controlled CMYK conversion for four-colour runs.

You evaluate the design on 3D mockups at real scale: the bottle with your label, the box open and closed, the can on the shelf. The same renders work for your e-commerce and social channels before the product is even printed.

On the press side we use the finishes that give a label its texture: natural and embossed papers, hot foil, blind embossing, UV varnish. Never as decoration — only when the product's positioning earns them. A €30 wine on the shelf should also look like a €30 wine.

The mistakes that shorten a label's life

After years of food and beverage work, we keep seeing the same four.

Designing on screen, printing blind. A label approved on a backlit monitor is a bet: colours shift, paper absorbs, the real format is smaller than it looked. That's why we present on real-scale mockups and insist on a colour proof before the run.

Filling every centimetre. The urge to say everything — history, territory, awards, pairings — produces labels that say nothing. On the shelf, hierarchy wins: one element that hooks from a distance, the rest legible up close.

Copying the category leader. If your Vermentino looks like the best-selling Vermentino, you just paid to be mistaken for someone else. Category codes exist to be understood — so you know where to break them.

Treating the range as separate labels. Every new product designed in isolation erodes the system. We design the first label with the tenth in mind: one structure, recognisable variants, room to grow without starting over.

The shelf is the test

Packaging isn't judged in a presentation — it's judged with the product sitting among its competitors. That is the standard behind the wine labels of SadiTappo.Wine, the work with Cantine Antigori, the packs of Caseificio Deidda, the craft beer of Birrificio Nanumoru. Different Sardinian products, same problem: standing out in crowded categories without dressing up as something else. It is the problem we solve every day for wineries and food producers.

For us, packaging is always part of a wider brand system. For LOWE, Sassari's first Longevity Wellness centre, the identity we designed lives on packaging, merchandising, signage and interiors: tote bags, water bottles and towels speak the same language as the website. For Fionard, a sustainable streetwear brand, the original graphics printed on the garments are the product: the e-commerce is built around on-demand printing, and every piece ships already on-brand.

If the brand doesn't exist yet, start there: branding and logo first, then its application to packaging. The other way round means building your label on temporary foundations.

What it costs

Packaging design starts at €900: one label or one pack, from concept to print-ready files. Coordinated stationery starts at €350. A product range, a custom die-cut or a project that starts from the logo gets a dedicated quote — written, free, no strings. Printing is paid directly to the printer, with quotes shown before proceeding: no hidden markup.

If the product also sells online, the project can continue with the shop and product pages: the box that lands at home is the brand's last touchpoint, and often its most photographed.

Got a product and a shelf to win? Request a free quote: tell us format, print runs and deadlines, and we reply with a concrete proposal.