Vivai Carone

A new brand identity for a local business

3 min readNov 4, 2021

Introduction

Vivai Carone is a small, family-run plant nursery located in Polignano a Mare, a town in Southern Italy. Known locally for its rich offer of ornamental plants, flowers and bougainvilleas, over the last forty years Vivai Carone has developed a strong know-how becoming a landmark in the province. In January 2021, I was contacted by the owner Onofrio, to re-imagine the visual identity of his business.

What I did

Brand Identity
Logo Design

Takeaways

Balancing inspiration with conversation
Turning practical needs into design solutions

1. Balancing inspiration with conversation

The garden is both a visual and generous source of coloured flowers and ornamental plants whose colours and shapes were the primary source of inspiration for the project.

When I started the project for Vivai Carone, the owner Onofrio invited me to spend some time with him and observe his daily routine, his customers and learn facts about different plant species. Starting from this basic knowledge, I developed an economy of colours and symbols for Vivai Carone to use across different touchpoints.

The logo

Among the wide range of colours and symbols developed for the identity, 3 of them particularly resonated with the client.

Together we chose the flower, the ornamental plant and the shovel to synthesise the selection of products and services offered by Vivai Carone.

2. Turning practical needs into design solutions

The brand identity of Vivai Carone is not rooted in fashion. It’s a response to practical needs. An example is the design of the business card.

A space for notes

One thing I observed was the necessity for the owner Onofrio to write short notes for their clients — the name of a plant species or a memo for their next appointment — on the business card. For this purpose, the new business card features a wider space between the basic contact information and the website so to make note-taking faster and easier.

N 41° 00' 21.2" — E 17° 11' 39.4"

Although Vivai Carone has been around for a long time, new clients often claims that reaching the plant nursery comes with not few difficulties. Being located on a highway exit, the address turn out to be too generic.

The solution? N 41° 00' 21.2" — E 17° 11' 39.4"

In order to make it easier for new customers to reach Vivai Carone, I replaced the old map on the business card with GPS coordinates. In such a way, you simply have to scan, copy and paste the coordinates on Google to get the directions right to the spot.