The boxes were still blank
A Sicilian maker of artisan panettoni and Easter colombe. They have trusted us with their product catalogue every year for more than five.
- Project
- Fratelli Sicilia
- Year
- 2025
- With
- Art direction: Leonardo Vaccaro until 2024, BFactory from 2025
The brief
The annual product catalogue for the sales network, the images printed directly onto the packaging, and the campaign work. The brief renews every season with new products.
The constraint
Two different crafts live inside the same project. The catalogue's styled shots have to make you hungry; the images destined for print on the packaging are a separate job — dedicated shots, styled for the pack — and there what counts is accuracy, because that photograph becomes the product the customer sees on the shelf. On top of that the calendar runs backwards: Christmas is photographed around Easter, when production can supply the samples and the heat has not yet made chocolate and glazes unworkable. Which means that every year four or five products reach the set before their packaging artwork is ready: the product exists, the box does not.
How we solved it
Where the finished box exists, that is what gets photographed. For the four or five products a season that do not have one yet, the shot is made with blank white boxes — real volumes, same shape, same dimensions — and the artwork is applied in post as soon as it arrives. It is the longer, more complex and more expensive of the two routes, and that is exactly why it is kept for those cases: but photographing the true volume rather than reconstructing it afterwards is what keeps the shadows, the reflections on the board and the relationship with the product correct, and the result is indistinguishable from a shot taken on the finished box. The packaging images follow a set of their own, built around what print requires. The rest is direction, settled with the art director before the set: palette, surfaces and framing are fixed on the moodboard, and the light is built so the brand colour stays full and the cake stays golden. Every range's settings are written down, and that is what lets a catalogue from five years ago and this year's still resemble each other.
What we delivered
- 2025 catalogue: 60 detail photographs
- 2025 catalogue: 43 styled shots, all laid out
- One campaign image, later enlarged for trade fairs and outdoor
- A dedicated set for the images printed on the packaging, remade when products change
- Four or five products shot on blank boxes, artwork applied in post
- Set specifications written down and reused season on season
Where the images ended up
- Packaging
- Product catalogue
- Outdoor
- Trade fairs
- Website
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The campaign image, later enlarged for trade fairs and outdoor. The empty space at the top is built into the format.
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