Metáfora olive oil
Metáfora is a high-end brand of olive oil produced in Avantos, a hamlet in Trás-os-Montes, located in the northeastern corner of Portugal. Design studio Pacifica was tasked to develop a label concept and identity elements that convey the essence of the famous Transmontano olive oil to the international market.
The chosen typeface is Eksell Display. Originally drawn by Swedish designer Olle Eksell in 1962, the high-contrast roman with sharp serifs was digitized and expanded by Göran Söderström, and released by Letters from Sweden in 2015. The wordmark is concluded with a drop-shaped period printed in metallic bronze color. Eksell Display also serves for the debossed text on the label. According to Pacifica, this is “a metaphor for the cold and manual method of pressing the brand’s olive oil.” Translated to English, the text on the label reads: “Behind these mountains, we still hide the time the world forgot. We preserve the genetic heritage of the trees and proudly hold, within this bottle, an olive oil originated from past legends and millennia.”
The informational text on the labels is set in Mark Simonson’s monospaced Anonymous. Bottle number, batch, and harvest date are added by hand.
Photography by Numo / Nuno Moreira. Video by Artur Serra Aráujo.
This packaging design won Silver in the European Design Awards 2020.
