When the Italian winery, “Cantine Ceci,” asked me to design the outside of their new bottle to reflect Italy for the upcoming EXPO, 2015 Worldwide Fair in Milan, I accepted with enthusiasm.
Having spent much of my life living and working abroad, I have personally experienced how my country-of-origin is perceived in other countries. Unfortunately, most of the time, Italy is associated with the word “Mafia.” In fact, this denigratory cliche’ is the most common and immediate portrait of our Italian lifestyle held by the rest of the world.
Starting from this assumption of how Italy is perceived, I’ve chosen to embrace the negative association with Mafia and then actively transform it, on the face of the bottle, into a positive image of our beautiful country.
The literal message-on-a-bottle starts with a very modern image of Italy as seen from by satelllite, at night. The logo ITALYa is a play on both the English and Italian names using an old, classic, Bodoni font intersected by a modern, sans-serif one.
Turning the bottle, you find a more shocking image of a bullet hole in the glass and the logo NO MAFIA, quoting the graphics of the iconic movie, The Godfather, probably the most famous film associated with Italy.
Turning the bottle further, graphics and image combine to form a singular message over a large number of beautiful Italian monuments, overlapping each other through the use of a collage technique, reflective of the Costrutivist Art movement, representing the outrageous number of spectacular monuments that fills every inch of our country. This is the real and rich beauty of our land.
The last image on the bottle is a detail from a column in the Forum in Rome.
The copy here says: JUST GREAT BEAUTY and closes with the ultimate message–on-a-bottle:
ITALYa NO MAFIA JUST GREAT BEAUTY.
F CK for OTELLO at VINITALY from March 22nd to March 25th at stand number D6 of Pavillion 1
