AGAPE

A. Hatzopoulos SA is one of the largest manufacturers of flexible packaging solutions in the Balkans. It is also a company with a strong social conscience. We were commissioned to create a commemorative edition in celebration of the company’s 90-year anniversary, to be offered as a gift to close associates and clients. The initial brief called for a coffee-table book-style edition on the company’s history. Instead, we suggested the creation of an illustrated narrative - a graphic novel - that would communicate the company’s core values and principles.

Our graphic novel, “A short story filled with love - AGAPE” is built on images as the primary means of communication, with minimal text. The storyline is fictional, but borrows elements from narratives and events from the founder’s life and the company’s history. In homage to the company’s object of business, the book’s production design adopts, reimagines and proposes the style and typography of old-school packaging, with strictly limited visual means: a limited color palette (black and natural paper color), unified sketch line thickness, rasterizing, etc.
Creating the illustrations for the book was a complex and challenging process, especially since it was decided from the start that although the storyline existed as a complete script, it would have to be communicated “silently” - exclusively through images.

Each panel was redesigned several times and reviewed across a series of criteria before its position was finalized. The story is elliptical and certainly requires the reader’s focus to be understood. This is intentional. The illustration style together with the narrative aims primarily to impart a sense of continuity. The design looks deceptively simple: equal-width forms and rasterizing which, together with the paper color, invoke a sense of innocence and nostalgia.

The sum of the illustrations presents a narrative that is linear - literally and figuratively - and clearly communicates effort, evolution, and vision.