Melideo Rocco

Melideo Rocco is an extra virgin olive oil rooted in a family story. The label pays tribute to Rocco’s grandfather and to the years he spent working the land, creating a visual bridge between his legacy and the new generation that continues it today.

Alternating bands of different papers shape the label like fragments of memory, revealing illustrations finished in gold. Their vertical rhythm follows the fluted glass of the bottle, turning label and container into a single tactile composition where heritage, material and contemporary design come together.

Curator’s Note

The most functional decision on this label is the one that looks purely decorative: cutting the paper into vertical strips instead of using one continuous sheet. A single label would have wrapped smoothly over the fluted bottle and gone slightly soft at each ridge. Segmenting it into bands lets each strip sit flat within its own flute, so the paper's texture stays sharp instead of stretching or puckering across the glass.

That structural fix also becomes the reveal mechanism for the artwork. Because the gold foil portrait and olive branch are split across separate bands rather than printed whole, nothing is legible from a distance. The image only resolves at close range, when the eye connects the fragments across the gaps. It rewards handling over shelf glance, which suits a product usually picked up and turned before it's bought.

Written by Derrick Lin, POTW curator

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