Frutas de Diseño: El Vivero curates an exhibition on the typography & branding of earth’s delights

On until the 15th of May, “Frutas de Diseño” at CentroCentro is an exhibition from the Madrid Design Festival 2022 organized by El Vivero, the design studio founded in 2004 by Florencia Grassi and Leandro Lattes.

The exhibition researches and reviews the image and brand designs of fruit chains including more than 250 tissue papers, 120 boxes, and 360 labels, samples that have been collected over the years in neighborhood greengrocers to which have been added specimens from collectors, visits to central markets, printers, box factories, and fruit marketers. 

The exhibition starts in the 1950s with the economic reactivation at the end of the post-war period, when some popular sketches on fruit came into fashion and follows the progression of their emblems until the 21st century. Presenting the functional sharp end of graphic design and its various application the designs present complex typography, colors, and illustrations ultimately bringing widespread focus and appreciation to the ambiguous sector of Spanish fruit companies.

“These popular designs have been around for years and have been updated almost without our noticing,” writes the introduction to an exhibition full of inspiration pictured in these tiny canvases of branding. 

“Since the economic revival at the end of the post-war period, there has been a change in style with respect to the creations of the beginning of the last century, brought about by the renewal of printing techniques. If in the past the images of fruit featured complex illustrations, today graphics prevail, with designs centered on typography, based on plain and striking colors for brands with all sorts of surprising names.”

An open archive of everyday branding the exhibition “Design Fruits” is fruitful and diverse.

“The use of brand names and the custom of wrapping fruit has been around for more than 100 years. Many of the brands originate from family-run companies that have freely named their products with great affection. Many date back to the golden age of the export of citrus fruits between 1920 and 1930. Today, some brands are still in the hands of those same families, while others have been passed on to fruit trading companies that handle various brands and qualities of fruit. Each company, whether large or small, has named and designed its brands to attract attention and stand out among the crowd. Making themselves visible has inspired them and has stimulated their imagination” notes El Vivero. 

“Today, large brands turn to advertising and marketing agencies to look after their image redesign process. In the case of small and medium-sized companies, image refinements are often left to the printers. In both scenarios, the designers are outsourced and anonymous. This anonymity, in a way, is common to many areas of everyday product design.”

 

 

 

 

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“Spanish tissue papers are renowned for their designs and printing quality. The density of their intense and metallic colors is quite remarkable, sometimes with as many as five different inks on very fine paper that withstand the handling of the fruit and reach the consumer intact.”

“Until now, the image of fruit in the first decades of the last century has been considered to be of a higher quality than the creations that emerged from the end of the 1950s onwards, a time when the theme and production became simpler. Design Fruits presents a selection of these brands, identifying the design of excellence in products that surround us, highlighting the value of the work of local creators and designers often unknown, framing their work in the contemporary design environment” adds Grassi & Lattes in their introductory note to this exhibition that promises to nurture your design diet with much-needed vitamins. 

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