Lucini Packaging Redesign

Creative Agency: Werner Design Werks
Creative Director: Sharon Werner
Designers: Sarah Forss, Abby Haddican, Anchalee Chambundabongse
Packaging Photography: Ken Friberg
Project Type: Produced, Commercial Work
Client: Lucini Italia
Location: Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
Packaging Contents: Olive oil, sauces, vinaigrettes
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Glass bottles and jars

Refreshing a beloved brand
Lucini Italia, a company passionate about creating handcrafted gourmet foods inspired by the culinary traditions of Italy, asked us to help them develop a more cohesive and premium packaging system. This meant assessing all of their products across different areas including premium and everyday olive oil, and several varieties of pasta sauce and multiple flavors of salad dressing.

They’d had unsuccessful redesign attempts in their past that had gone too far and tried to impose a “red checkered tablecloth” vibe on the brand. They wanted something more authentic and true to their Italian heritage. They also didn’t want to alienate their extremely loyal customer base.

Lucini’s flagship product, Premium Select Extra Virgin Olive Oil, is a bestseller and a customer favorite. Research showed that customers were fond of the product’s existing packaging, so we were challenged to improve its shelf appeal without losing its overall character and charm. We tweaked nearly every element of the Premium Select package, making a number of small design improvements that added up to a much stronger shelf presence: we re-designed the logo to give it more elegance, arced the label to give the logo more space and we re-drew the naive “travel illustrations” for better composition and flow. We also created a more authentic-looking parchment, improved the label’s information hierarchies, and added black and gold elements to increase the bottle’s premium appeal. In addition, we created a monogram olive branch L that gives them one more element in their visual vocabulary.

Lucini’s other products— Everyday Olive Oil, handcrafted sauces, and artisan vinaigrettes—were more dramatically redesigned to complement the new-and-improved Premium Select Extra Virgin bottle and compete more successfully within their respective retail categories. The end result is a beautiful, flexible system that looks as good as the products taste.

What’s Unique?
This is a very subtle redesign. Every detail has been considered and improved upon without sacrificing the brand’s considerable equity.