Ginnasium / Contrasti

Contrasti (Contrasts) is a Premium Craft Gin label designed by Studio La Regina for Ginnasium 2025. Ginnasium is an Italian neuromarketing research project in which twenty design studios, one per region, explored how packaging details shape the consumer’s emotional response.

The concept draws from Calabria’s defining duality: the Mediterranean sea and the snow-capped peaks of the Apennines. The design reveals itself progressively. From a distance, it attracts with its deep blue and sea-green palette. Up close, it surprises with iridescent reflections. At touch, it delivers a tactile experience.

The main label combines a sea-inspired colour wash with Lumafin foil stamping. This recreates the shifting shimmer of light on water. A second label in finely die-cut white paper adds physical relief and evokes the texture of sea foam. A reverse-printed clear label is applied to the back of the bottle. It is visible only through the transparency of the gin itself and reveals a snow-capped summit alongside a quote by Pythagoras: “Do not stop where you have arrived.”

The system is completed by a Vinolok glass stopper and a white paper neck collar. The result is a bottle that tells the story of a region through contrast: fluid and solid, warm and cold, visible and hidden.

Curator’s Insight

What makes Contrasti worth studying is how deliberately the reveal is sequenced. Most label design works at one distance… shelf impact… and stops there. This one is structured in layers that only fully disclose themselves as you pick the bottle up, rotate it, and eventually pour from it. The decision to hide narrative information behind the liquid itself is an unusually considered move; it ties the act of using the product to the act of discovering it. The neuromarketing brief behind the project also adds an interesting lens — this isn’t just a beautiful bottle, it’s a documented experiment in how material choices direct attention and emotional response.