What Goes Into Designing a Wine Label?

[Celerity]

Three designers on the inspiration that goes into creating the bottles you reach for

https://www.eater.com/wine/21303085/how-to-design-wine-label-art



MyMy relationship with wine started when I was a sophomore in college and my friends and I would trek to the liquor store in downtown Baltimore that didn’t card. Usually, we’d buy a liter of Yellow Tail or Carlo Rossi to take to house parties. I wasn’t so interested in the flavor profiles, the tannins, or whatever; I was interested in getting sloshed for cheap.

Luckily, those tendencies have been quieted (for now). I’ve picked up various hobbies during this time of isolation: pressing flowers and plants from my walks around Prospect Park, Sudoku, listening to lots of jazz, and wine tasting. Wine has a relatively low barrier to entry — you can find lots of decent bottles under $20, and the price means much lower stakes than imbibing multiple cocktails in a night.

As the design director of Eater, judging things on how they look is part of my job. Between supporting my local wine shop and the restaurants-turned-provisions stores in my neighborhood, there are tons of options to choose from. I’m drawn to wines with illustrated labels (if your natural wine doesn’t have a children’s drawing on it, is it even a natural wine?) and beautiful, flourishing typography.

I love big, Brutalist type on a minimalist label, but also abstract expressionism; I often don’t have an agenda in mind until I see it. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is the old adage, but that’s the entire point. Tons of great wines have simple or even dull labels, but a lot more goes into making wine labels than you think. I spoke to three creatives, all with very different processes, about how they handled an assignment that is produced hundreds (or even thousands!) of times, making sure that it not only stood out on a shop’s shelves, but also compelled a buyer to bring it home.

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[TexasTowelie]

1. At least one bottle of wine.

Seeing that there is a cat on the label in the last photo, probably a few bong hits too.

[gratuitous]

2. Sometimes more effort goes into the label design than the contents

The best thing out of some bottles I've purchased has been the cork.