• Famiglia Santoni enlists alcohol branding and packaging experts Stranger & Stranger for a brand refresh.
• Stranger & Stranger gives each of Famiglia Santoni’s bottles a unique design with a strong Italian touch while creating a unified system.

Founded in 1960, Famiglia Santoni is an Italian line of traditional spirits. Despite its longevity, Famiglia Santoni was starting to get lost on the shelf, and the Tuscan brand enlisted alcohol branding and packaging experts at Stanger & Stranger to give it a facelift, creating a visual identity that would give it a pronounced presence.

“Famiglia Santoni has been making classic Italian aperitifs, vermouths, and bitters since the 1960’s, but their packaging was a little dusty and recessive on shelf,” says Kevin Shaw, founder at Stranger & Stranger. “With such an authentic heritage and a really delicious product, we needed to enable the brand to sing with Italian pride and engage with the modern consumer. The range needed to be cohesive, but given such a diverse collection of liquids, there needed to be enough flexibility to give each product its own personality.”

There are seven spirits in the Famiglia Santoni range, and Stranger & Stranger gave each of them a unique look. What’s especially impressive in the packaging design is the way Stranger & Stranger incorporates the colors of the apertifs, bitters, and vermouths into the bottles, and how the studio gives each one a distinct look while maintaining a cohesive brand-wide system.

Each bottle features a dual-color palette, and all combinations are attractive and striking. Gin Rabarbaro uses teal and yellow, while Rabarbaro uses a similar combination inverted, with a yellow background and teal text. Amaro di Chianciano’s wine-like color is paired with lavender used for the label’s background.

The typography also has a classic Italian feel, whether it is tall and wide, as in Vermouth al Rabarbaro, or uses a script, as in Aperit Spritz. The bottles have a cinematic appearance, as if lifted from vintage movie posters.

At the center of each bottle is the Famiglia Santoni crest, followed by another label spelling out “Famiglia Santoni,” in a consistent type across the range, and the paper texture elevates the already elegant label designs. The same pattern is printed on the bottle tops, with “Santoni” in a band along the bottom of the caps.

“The system is all about balance and is underpinned by the commonalities across the range: same embossed custom bottle, same distinct custom cap, same label shape, same brand logo and icon, even the same support fonts. The only things that change are the colors and the product descriptor fonts,” explains Shaw.

Stranger & Stranger’s design is definitely eye-catching on the shelf. The bright colors and distinctly Italian character of Famiglia Santoni’s update pay homage to the brand’s Tuscan roots while drawing on them for a range of bottles, each uniquely designed yet with enough in common to form a cohesive collection that makes a lot of sense.