Gelati Sky is a boutique, premium gelati range. The story of Gelati Sky has a strong personality driven by Gelati Sky founder Paul Scalisi’s memories of growing up in Rome, eating gelati – ‘a world where every moment seemed frozen in an amazing sensory assault and every cloud in the sky made you feel it was about to rain gelato’. We were looking for something that was strikingly unique, represented his story and would create conversation. The communication platform of ‘it’s what dreams taste like’ was derived out of the brand strategy definition for Gelati Sky conducted by Brand DNA.

The goal was to express these feelings through the package and the tastes through the flavors. The concept that we came up with was born out of these ideas. We combined the imagery of Italy with objects that looked like the flavor to create a unique, organic and scrumptious shape for each flavor. The packaging looks like it is part of memories and dreams from Italy.

Gelati Sky started as a boutique Gelati range servicing restaurants and specialist food shops. The packaging was the strongest step to building a brand consumer could connect with. As small ultra premium brand, the package needed to take on a more delicate personality than the bigger, more established companies. The package needed to not only reflect the personality and story but also to look different while still maintaining premium feel. The taste of the Gelati is simply amazing and we knew that if we developed a rich, beautiful label, one that would get buyers and customers excited it would be very successful.

“Every presentation we have done when I pull the containers out of the box the first word is WOW! Then they taste the product and they say WOW again! I think we got a winner.”

Paul Scalisi
Managing Director & Gelati Chef
Gelati Sky

Client: Gelati Sky
Brand identity, brand strategy and packaging for retail gelati brand Gelati Sky.

Over the last decade or more we’ve worked-on a number of project with fashion label Hemisphere. Hemisphere are a fiercely independent mens label with and ‘everyday denim sub-brand – you can see some of the work we designed with them here. In 2006 we worked on some fabric designs for a range of their shirts, which became their best selling lines, and as a result decided a couple of years later to form a partnership to launch a new label of premium mens shirts featuring custom designed printed fabrics.

We worked in creative partnership to develop the brand name, proposition, brand definition and designed the brand identity for the label which we called Barnaby & Brown. We designed a packaging solution that was both functional – it protects the shirt, and unique with layers of discovery.

The brand experience also included swing tags designed for the first range that reflected the style of a ‘little black book’. The swing tags included information about shirt care as well as a pocket that contained a pair of collar stays.

We also designed two ranges of shirts. Our designs were screen printed onto high quality Egyptian cotton which were then made-up into several shirt designs using Hemisphere’s shirt blocks. The shirts were finished with subtle embellishments, high quality buttons , stitching and labeling.

We produced stationery and a start-up web site for the brand before the venture was nipped in the bud. From a brand perspective, it was a huge pitty for us to not see all of our fine work come to fruition. And yes, we’re still in therapy.

Client: Barnaby & Brown
Brand identity, brand strategy and packaging for fashion label Barnaby & Brown.

An Italian Cheese Story
Our initial brief for this project was to develop an Italian story for a range of seven Italian style cheese SKUs.
The brand name (now long forgotten) was unremarkable (I mentioned it was long forgotten) with a slight Eastern European feel. The brand had a foothold in a number of local delicatessens, but the Fresh Cheese Company had negotiated the opportunity to trial the brand in National supermarket chain Woolworths. If we could create a strong enough brand story on shelf to impress the buyers at Woolworths, the Fresh Cheese Company had a
winner on their hands.

Buried in the brief was an orphan product to be brought under the new brand – it was a single, unloved cheese line, but with the wonderfully, evocative Italian name of Mamma Lucia.

As soon as we came across the name we new Mamma Lucia was a winner, and in fact should be the hero element on which we built the brand, with all the other cheese lines joining the Italian party over at Mamma’s house. The guys at the Fresh Cheese Company jumped on-board and we designed a new brand identity (which we’re sad to say didn’t make it to the supermarket shelf) and a range of packaging labels for presentation to the big cheese at Woolworths. The rest as they say in Italy is history. Within six months the Mamma Lucia range had been successfully trialed and was being rolled-out as the primary Italian Cheese range throughout both major supermarket chains Nationally.

As we like to say – ‘Thank your Mamma for the Cheese.’