What is the company's profile

An Ode to the Gnarled comes from a Portuguese company with a background in crypto, which owns groves of olive trees more than 1,000 years old and farms them without irrigation or industrial process. The oil is priced at the top end of the market, in a category where design no longer reliably signals quality, and the brand had to justify that price to chefs and connoisseurs who expect more than taste.

We positioned the company outside the category, as a keeper of antiquity rather than a producer of oil. The brand speaks about the trees instead of the oil, so that each purchase reads as appreciation for something younger trees cannot reproduce.

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What is the extent of tasks

A        Brand Personality (Market Landscape Analysis, Current Brand Analysis, Industry Analysis, Corporate Culture Analysis, Company Analysis, Product/Service Analysis, The Big Idea, Brand Positioning, Brand Strategy, Brand Story, Brand Character).

B        Brand Language (Domain Naming, Slogans/Claims, Key Messaging, Descriptor, Tagline, Brand Tone & Voice, Brand, Brand Statement, Brand Storytelling, Brand Anthem, Brand Sales Writing).

C        Brand Appearance (Brand Visual Identity, Visual Needs Analysis, Brand's Visual Expression Concept, Information Architecture, Functional Design Systems, Brand Art Direction, Logomark, Logotype, Iconography, Brand Visual Architecture, Brand Color Palette, Brand Typography, Brand Graphics & Patterns, Imagery & Photography, Branding Guidelines, Grids, Brand Collateral, Brand Signage, Wayfinding, Packaging Design, Editorial, Stationary, Web & Digital Design, UX/UI Design).

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What are the objectives

A        Justify a price at the top end of the market. The brand needed a basis for its value that would hold in a crowded category, where design no longer signals quality or cost.

B        Build a verbal identity with its own authority. The brand needed a name, tagline and voice that set it apart from the category's vocabulary and speak to buyers who expect an experience rather than a product description.

C       Create a visual identity and packaging system. The brand needed a visual language across the wordmark, bottle, box and digital touchpoints that supports the positioning and makes the price legible at first contact.

How we achieved the objectives

ad A        We took the brand out of olive oil altogether and positioned the company as an antiquity company, on the principle of premium through age. Rather than compete on flavour notes or bottle design, the brand rests its value on trees that have produced fruit for more than a millennium, something no producer with younger groves can claim, and the oil becomes evidence of that age rather than the product itself.

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ad B        The verbal identity is written by the Spirit of the Orchardist, an ancient witness who has watched these groves for centuries and speaks as part poet, part historian. The name An Ode to the Gnarled takes the form of a work of praise and uses "gnarled" as a plain description of the trees, turning their visible imperfection into the source of their worth. The tagline, Olive Oil from Ancient Groves, keeps the product legible, and the supporting lines measure value in seasons and years rather than in grades or awards.

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ad C        The visual identity draws on the codes of archaeology and archiving rather than those of the category. We paired an inscriptional serif wordmark with an engraved portrait of a single gnarled tree and a mosaic pattern of olive branches, set against a palette of deep olive, parchment and the colour of the oil. The flask is closed with a stone stopper, and the presentation box opens like a bound volume around a booklet headed The Living Archive. The same system carries the narrator's role as chronicler into the packaging and across the website and social channels.