A brief of one line
The brief came down to one line: one olive tree, one day, four products. Every decision after that was a way of not breaking it. The first sketch put the four containers at true scale and dressed them in the colours of the sky.
The idea
One tree. One day. Four products.
Skincare usually sells a routine: ten steps, three serums and a toner nobody can explain. LYLIA sells a day, the longest one of the year. On 21 June in Bar, where some olive trees are older than anything written about them, the oil comes from Žutica, the local olive, and the sun does the rest.
Each product belongs to an hour, and each hour has a bearing, the exact point on the compass where the sun stands. The serum is sunrise at 57°. The sunscreen is noon, due south at 180°. The body oil is sunset at 303°. The night cream belongs to the hour after dark, when the sun has slipped to 329°, eighteen degrees under the horizon.
We didn’t name the products. We looked up where the sun was.
57°SerumSunrise · 05:08 · 30 ml
180°SunscreenSolar noon · 12:45 · 100 ml
303°Body oilSunset · 20:23 · 150 ml
329°Night creamAfter dark · 22:36 · 50 ml
The sun
Every name is a bearing.
Move through 21 June in Bar. The ring is the compass with north at the top, the dot is the sun, and the shape in the middle is the product of the hour seen from above, casting the shadow it really casts. Every box was drawn from this.
Sun bearing · Bar · 21.06.2026
57°
Sunrise. The serum.
- Time
- 05:08 CEST
- Altitude
- 0°
- Shadow
- —
Positions are calculated for Bar (42.09° N, 19.10° E) on 21 June 2026, Central European Summer Time. North is always the top. The pictures follow the same rule, which is why the sunrise shadows run to the lower left and the sunset shadows to the lower right.
Colour
One olive, ripening through the day.
The palette follows a single olive from morning to night: green at sunrise, oil-gold at noon, fig-violet at sunset, almost black after dark. Around it are two stones from the coast and one black that is really an olive. Each hour colour belongs to one product and is never lent to another. Colours are always flat, because the light already makes the gradients.
Ground
Type
Pick a ground and a type colour. The ratio is the WCAG contrast; 4.5 is the floor for small print, 3 for anything set large.
Four shadows from the longest day.
30 ml ℮ · Olive oil morning serum, face. Jutarnji serum za lice. PAO 6M.
12.0Small print · pass
Print: Limestone is the uncoated cotton board itself and takes no ink. Every other colour is matched to a Pantone on that board under daylight, never on screen. Screen: the values below are the masters.
Type
One speaks. One measures.
LYLIA Slab Serif is our own, drawn from an old film photograph of a 1970s restaurant: olive wallpaper, cane chairs and a menu numbered big enough to read from the door. It sets every name, number and line worth reading twice. IBM Plex Mono sets everything that has to be exact, like volumes, bearings, ingredients and the law.
Display · LYLIA 120/0.85
303°
Headline · LYLIA 64/0.95
For the golden hour.
Lead · LYLIA 26/1.38
Olive oil from Žutica olives, pressed in Bar.
Body · LYLIA 19/1.5
Massage into damp skin after the last swim of the day, while the sun goes down at 303° and nobody is in a hurry.
Label · Plex Mono 11, +16%
Sun at 303° · sunset on the longest day · Bar, 21.06.
Small print · Plex Mono 12/1.6
150 ml ℮ · Evening oil, body. Večernje ulje za tijelo. Olea europaea (olive) fruit oil. PAO 12M. LYLIA d.o.o., Bar, Montenegro.
The four bearings on the glass and the boxes are drawn, not typeset: one thin line each, the figures leaning on each other like an entry in a ship’s log. They are artwork, used only at their own size and place. Everywhere else, numbers are set in LYLIA Slab Serif.
Try it
Znaj kad je dosta. Žutica, Bar, 21.06.
The wordmark
Five letters, no symbol.
The wordmark is LYLIA set in its own typeface and then drawn closer, so the first L slides under the Y. There is no symbol, because the four numbers already do that job. On the glass the wordmark is a window, the one part of the bottle left unfrosted. On the box it is pressed blind into the board, with no ink at all.
On Limestone
On Olive Black
Polished into the frost, 14 mm
Ink, not effects
Olive Black on light grounds, Limestone on dark ones. Never outlined, shadowed, stretched or given a gradient.
Blind on board
On the boxes the wordmark is embossed without ink, so it shows only when light rakes across the board.
Clear on glass
On the containers it is the one unfrosted area. Nothing is printed over it or around it.
Never with a sun
No sun icons, rays or horizons next to it. The numbers carry the sun, so the name doesn’t have to.
The glass
The same glass at four different hours.
Every container is sandblasted until it’s soft to the touch and fades from the green of the grove at the base into black at the shoulder, the way an olive tree goes into shadow. Nothing is printed on the front. The name and the number are left polished, two clear windows that only show when light comes through. The back carries the least the law allows, in dark olive, on the pale band at the base.
The box
The shadow is the label.
Each box carries the true shadow of its container at its hour, calculated from the sun’s real position over Bar: long and low at sunrise, a short stub pointing north at noon, long again at sunset, and at night no shadow at all. The board is thick felt-textured cotton. LYLIA is pressed in blind, each container’s silhouette rises from one side, and the back is set like a lab report, in English and Montenegrin.
BoardUncoated felt-textured cotton board, 700 gsm, in its own Limestone. No lamination, no foil.
Blind embossLYLIA and the container silhouettes, 0.6 mm, soft and domed. The bearing inside each silhouette stays at paper level.
DebossThe sun disc sits in a shallow well, a small dish with a raised centre.
Flat printThe photo square, the shadow, the compass and the small print. Nothing glossy, so the board stays the material.
Four nets, one construction: tuck ends, no glue on the faces, no insert. Each box holds its container with a millimetre to spare on every side.
Pictures
Three ways of looking.
LYLIA is photographed in three series and only three. Each picture shows one moment, lit the way that moment is really lit.
Behind frost
The products are pressed against frosted glass, close enough to read and too far to touch. There’s warm light and one object per frame, held by a hand that never quite comes into focus.
The four hours
Each product is shot on limestone with olives at the ripeness of its hour, seen from straight above, with north at the top of the frame. At sunrise the shadows run long to the lower left. At noon they shrink to a stub. At sunset they swing to the lower right. At night only the moon lights it, from overhead, and nothing casts a shadow.
57° · 05:08 · Sunrise
180° · 12:45 · Noon
303° · 20:23 · Sunset
329° · 22:36 · NightIn print
On the page LYLIA behaves like a magazine, not a catalogue: one picture, the wordmark set large, and the story on the facing page in small type with plenty of room around it.
NeverFaces. The skin is implied.
NeverWater droplets on the glass.
NeverLeaves in focus. Only their shadows.
NeverA light that doesn’t match the hour.
Voice
Write it like a ship’s log.
Keep sentences short and put numbers before adjectives. Say where the sun is and what the product does, then stop. No glow, no ritual, no journey. Everything is written in English and Montenegrin, and the second language is never an afterthought.
How it was made
Seven decisions, in the order we made them.
A brand is mostly the things you decided against. This is the order we decided against them in.
From clock to compass
The first names were clock times. Then we found that someone else already sells the hours. A clock time belongs to everybody, but a bearing measured from Bar on one day of the year belongs to us, and it’s more exact. So 05:08 became 57°.
A typeface from one photograph
The reference was a single film photograph of a 1970s restaurant. We drew the letters from its menu, proofed them, and then spent longer than we’d like to admit making every letter sit on the same line and stand the same height.
The glass, three times
It began in sky colours, one per hour. Then it went amber, like an apothecary bottle. Then we took the colour out altogether and used one glass for all four, grove green into black, and moved the hour to the box. Drag to see the last two side by side.
A window, not a label
White print on frosted glass looked like a sticker, so we stopped printing. The wordmark and the number are left unfrosted and polished clear, and the bottle only reads when light passes through it. On the sunscreen, which is plastic, a clear gloss varnish does the same job.
Giving the box a shadow
Each box got the one thing a bottle can’t carry, its own shadow at its hour, calculated rather than guessed. The shadow is printed flat and runs off the front onto the side, where the board takes over: the container rises in blind emboss and the shadow ends at its shoulder.
Drawing the light first
Before any picture is taken, we draw its shadows: every object at true scale and every shadow at the sun’s real angle for that hour, north at the top. After that the light only has to agree. Drag to compare the plan for sunset with the picture.
Tokens
For whoever builds it next.
The whole system in one block of CSS. Paste it into a project and the colours, type and rules come with it.