In our latest interview, we speak to Mario di Paolo, Founder & Creative Director of design agency Spazio di Paolo and the 2021 Designer of the Year. He tells us more about the Italian agency and their award-winning works.

Tell us a bit about yourself and Spazio di Paolo 

I am an Italian designer with a contemporary art and photography background. Spazio Di Paolo, located in Spoltore in the province of Pescara, is a "space of life" where I have reunited personal and family experiences, that has allowed me to build an original and unique working method. It's a workspace, a place for international meetings as well as exchanges in art and design, innovation and culture. Here innovation is created through feeding the curiosity towards everything that is culture, art, photography, typographic technique and biodiversity.

How does it feel to be crowned 2021 Designer of the Year?

The Designer Of The Year 2021 award is an absolute and unique honour! A prestige not just for myself and Spazio di Paolo, but also for Italy. Thanks to this, Italian packaging design is finally recognized as a Made in Italy excellence as much as furniture and fashion.

The worldwide attention that this title brings to what I do in terms of experimentation and research of new forms of, and languages for packaging, also highlights my customers and the production chain that collaborates with me. Spazio Di Paolo has been a driver in the wine and spirits sector for years, but I am truly pleased with this latest success because it expresses the strong and unequivocal message that all the innovations we have made in the packaging design sector have now become a reference point.

Dannami, 2021 Bronze Award

Spazio di Paolo won 13 awards over the last few years. Is there any project in particular that stood out?

We are currently the most awarded Italian studio at the Pentawards, with 13 awards and the Designer Of The Year 2021 trophy. For us, participating at Pentawards means taking part in the intellectual exchange between the best creative minds in a world-class packaging design competition. Our approach is to participate with an innovative spirit, not only from a graphic and creative point of view, but also from an engineering one, through our best projects and new ideas.

Through all of our work, we obtain real results of innovation and creativity through our typographic techniques, and I am proud of all of them.

VELENOSI VILLA ANGELA, 2021 Silver Award

When taking part in the Pentawards competition, I think about the quality of the packaging design submitted, rather than the quantity. The work must be competitive in terms of realization, technical innovation, composition and balance of communication. It's a great opportunity to showcase what Spazio Di Paolo manages to create on the market.

As an example, Vodka Votiva was a complicated, revolutionary and innovative packaging where we used an avant-garde technique: a three-dimensional label worked to interact with the space. It follows a theme developed in the last five years and finds feasibility in a technique that we are improving, by collaborating with printing machine manufacturers.

Vodka Votiva

Which types of products and clients do you like to work with?

We are specialized in Wine & Spirits and we work with different entrepreneurs that produce wine and spirits, from historic cellars, to large groups, and new joint ventures.

When I start a project I consider them all as partners, not customers. To obtain a winning product, it's essential to empathize with the project through understanding and by sharing the same vision. This way, working becomes a pleasure and each project is then linked to new experiments between the different elements of the production chain: from material suppliers to printing presses. Everyone plays a decisive role in creating true innovation, and the resulting success has a connection between all involved.

URCIUOLO VOTIVA, 2021 Bronze Award

What is your philosophy and motivation?

For any project I face, my goal is to study and create new descriptive languages, through packaging, different realities in terms of production, territory, history, culture and biodiversity. The knowledge and research behind each of these factors is the first real tool that allows me to meet the market needs for a product. The label then comes to life through innovation without forgetting industrial reproduction and series application, thanks to the profound mastery of materials and printing processes.

If a technique does not yet exist, we pursue it so that it can become a new possibility. For me, the creative process is a constant stimulus and almost becomes a necessity - and is perhaps the best thing. When you operate with extreme freedom this becomes the most interesting motivation.

Do you have any exciting projects coming up that you can share with us?

The most recent innovative project, even if published a few years ago, concerns the three-dimensional labels through which Spazio Di Paolo has managed to create interaction between product and consumer, developing an original technique that, until then, was unthinkable.

The technique is that of overlapping papers and natural powders, creating a perfectly optimized solution that will soon be adopted by the world of packaging design dedicated to Wine & Spirits. Our studies on printing techniques have opened up new ways and are often followed by printing press manufacturers, printers and graphic designers. This makes us proud but equally cautious in revealing our findings in advance.

What do you see as the key change in the packaging industry following the pandemic?

Currently, we are moving towards the redefinition of packaging as a qualitative rather than containing object, in which the distinctive elements evolve.

After the oppression of the Pandemic, which triggered the need for freedom and beauty, attention to packaging and the search for beautiful things has increased both on the part of consumers and of the entire production chain. I believe therefore that the post-Covid period will represent an opening to various stimuli.

The key factor will be the courage to undertake an innovation analysis to achieve greater freedom of expression. We are emerging from two years of limitations that have redesigned our lifestyle by pushing boundaries and repositioning many of the balances of the production system to meet new needs. A difficult situation, of course, that however has also provided great intellectual opportunities. This brings us back to dealing with the climate and environmental impact of packaging and dealing with the concept of sustainability.

Following this, my point of view is that packaging design will go towards the need to define a reuse approach - reuse will be the new challenge. The cost of reuse will become the fundamental and perhaps the most important factor in designing a project, significantly helping the pack to become functionally reusable. To make consumption sustainable, the only way is the reuse of packaging.

Therefore, as creatives, finding new forms of communication through an adaptation inspired design is an attempt to raise awareness of careful consumption and use of materials. Examples include detachable labels, resized labels for paper saving, etc... The possibilities to rationalize resources already exist, so the design should optimize these to create a new network between the consumer and producer, and a new style of consumption. Consumption must be thought of and regulated if it is to be a key part of sustainable design and packaging.

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