Branding

To gain a better understanding of what is 'cool' and 'different' I am going to look at some examples of wine packaging designs.

These are some very unique packaging design ideas. 

This is all to gain a better understanding of the type of packaging i will be creating. I particularly like the 'Hout Bay' wine design. I quite like the basic but effective illustrations. The key to an effective piece of packaging is to create an eye- catching design. I also was drawn to the piece just above this text to the left. The actual screw top has been designed to create a pouring effect. 

I have recently looked into what the current cool brands are on the official website. Companies such as apple and sports brands like Adidas are making it in the top ranks. Vin- ex is a company which personally I recognised from hearing the name, but when it came to seeing the corporate image, i had never seen it before. 

Taking Nike for example, it is a very basic logo design, but the amount of ways that they slap their branding on products is what gets them noticed. They have a range of sports to produce their own goods for, and fashion purposes as well. Vin-ex can only really exploit their own market and build on the current flavours which are out their. I feel that for me to make them stand out, we need an imaginative logo design, brightly coloured. Something that is going to make people look twice. 

I first mind mapped some ideas. I looked at what I personally thought was 'cool' and to see if i could incorporate any of these ideas into my project. The main thoughts i came up with were:

Retro Clothing

Indie music

Cars

Football

The 80's 

sex

Mods

After this mind map, i found that it would be fairly hard to use any of these ideas in my project. I think the relationship between the actual wine and the concept is crucial. I found it hard to really create an idea which included my own interests. I found that I would have to go back to basics and look what other people were interested in. 

With my own research, i felt that sex would be the most effective type of advertisement as it is for many other projects. But then i thought it was too predictable. It would be quite tough to make the advertisement. 

I felt that I could use a potential aspect of sex, but more toned down.  

Things like chat up lines, something that wine could influence. As generally when your out, you are going to try and interact with people. 

After looking in the cool branding list this had not been used for any of the top 100. I feel it would be a good form of advertisement but it is slightly predictable, and as people have seen it all before, i don't think the impact would have worked well enough.

There is always a way to test out the wine before we actually drink it. I wondered if we would be able to involve these on the ac 

I then looked into different wine based mannerisms, and how we always like to toast to something. I looked at basic phrases to try and gain some sort of inspiration. 

'Cheers!'

'Chin Chin!'

'All the best!'

'To good health!' 

'Salute!'

These are fairly suitable but very basic. It wouldn't really be taking on a fresh idea and applying it to wine. And I feel that it would be harder to try and be creative with these basic sayings, I need something that would grab the customer, and keep them interested. I then thought of the basic way we test wine out. The process before we actually drink it. Such as taste, smell, swirling it round the glass. I thought i could adapt these on the wine labels and slogans.

Such as:

'swill me'

'pour me'

'let me age'

'respect me'

These are quite clever concepts which i could possibly further develop. The only down side is that its not really a strong enough theme to carry out into a brochure.

I looked at possible song lyrics as well. Songs that describe the flavour of the wine well. 

A winters tale by Queen?

The Beatles- Here comes the sun?

U2- Beautiful Day?

Although I feel strongly that this idea could work, I don't want to divert the attention, as after all we are trying to promote Vin x, not the musicians. 

After mind mapping ideas and exploring which routes i could go down, i decided that i am going to produce something that will grip the buyer. Many wine labels are very basic, they show the basic make and flavour on the bottle. I want to try and tell a story about the wine using poetry. I am going to look at a few basic wine based poems, and then play with the lettering and shapes to create something visually pleasing.

As poetry is normally associated with old type style, I want to try and find something more modern, as the task is to produce something 'cool'. I feel that I don't particularly have a target audience, as i feel wine is for all ages. And despite making it 'cool' i think these designs will reach out to the older crowd as well. 

'A Vine in Blossom' By Andre' Theuriet

ALONG the vines the blossoms thrive,

    To-night just twenty years are mine…
Ah! but it’s good to be alive
And feel the veins that seethe and strive
    Like the crushed grape that turns to wine.

This is a poem i have found on the Internet, it caught my eye particularly because it is short and snappy. I feel that if i went into too much depth with the poetry, the customer would lose interest. It is not too much of a olden type style either. 

'Wine and Water acrimony'

Said Wine to Water, So fine I be,
They carry me over both land and sea,
They call me both port and sherry,
I cause every heart to be merry,

Again, this poem is short and snappy. My poetry cannot be too long as I want to ideally use only one verse. It has to round up and evaluate the type of wine on display. I am looking for three poems, one for red, white and rose' wine.

To our lord, upon water made wine By Richard Crashaw

Thou water turn’st to wine, fair friend of life,
        Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of thy reign,
    Distills from thence the tears of wrath and strife,
        And so turns wine to water back again

This poem contains some of the aspects which I am looking for, although i am fairly worried as it is a very old poem. I am trying to make it 'cool', and I fear that this won't reach out to most audiences.

A Toast By George Santanya

See this bowl of purple wine,
Life-blood of the lusty vine!
All the warmth of summer suns
In the vintage liquid runs

This describes the wine itself really well. It is short and snappy and I feel could well be an option for one of my wine labels.

I have only to pick three poems as i will only be making labels for Red wine, Rose' and White. I think the poems shown above are snappy and easy to remember. I will be using 4/5 lines of the poem for each label. 

Design

I need to now work out what type of design I am going to use for my wine labels. I need something that is eye catching and innovative. As it is the text I am going to be adapting, the best place to start would to look at concrete poetry. 

 

These are all very creative posters. They are a few examples of what I could do with my lettering. I think for them to stand out, it is essential to catch the customers eye. 

This is one of the pieces i have found. I am particularly fond of this as i like the story each line tells. They have visually captured the imagination of the customer. I want to try and replicate the same sort of design. I personally think it looks 'cool'. It is different to any normal wine label design and would stand out from the crowd. It looks a little like the old boxing poster type design. I could possibly incorporate this into my brochure as well as my wine labels. 

This is a typical vintage boxing type poster. As you can see, it has some similarities of the piece shown above. I quite like this theme and plan to take some aspects out of it. 

This is a recent fight but they have produced the advertisement in a vintage type style. Notice the stars which surround some of the type, these are some type of the aspects I want to bring into my own design.   

I have chosen particularly to design my work this way as I think with the two cultures clashing, it will create a type of interest. I want to display my work in this style, but add my own imagery if needed. It is a new and inventive idea. I will be using bright colours with big text. 

Now deciding that I wanted to follow the type of block boxing poster theme, i needed to choose my poems and try and work out a suitable layout.

After my research of wine poetry, I decided for the red wine I wanted this particular piece.

To Bacchus By Francis Beaumont

Dance upon the mazer's brim, 

In the crimson liquor swim,

From Thy plenteous Hand divine,

Let a River run with wine!

I have chosen this poem due to it being short and snappy. It explains the wine in its own right, making it sound seducing. It is ideal as I was looking for four lines, which summarised the wine itself.

I want to try and keep the consistency throughout my wine labels as well as my brochure. I am going to incorporate a pop art style as well, but I don't want to go into much depth with it. I want to keep the focus on the boxing type theme. 

This was my first rough shape design. After gathering a bit of feedback I came to the conclusion that this isn't at all the type of design I want to produce. I am quite fond of the silhouette in the 'D'. As for the rest of the piece, it looks a tad like a montage. I would want to keep the colouring the same for future reference, and the wording needs to be placed properly.

I wanted to try and create an image for each sentence, but I think from this I have found it looks a little cheap. 

As you can see from these boxing posters. The colours are very basic, and they tend to have the same red banner stretching across it. Also, the background seems to have a type of gristly, old effect. 

These are the type of effects I will be carrying through to my brochure and wine label designs. 

I need to find the suitable types of text to put into my wine labels. I am looking for something that is bold and effective. I am going to keep the text running with the same colour as its background, keeping consistency. 

After looking on In- design for possible fonts, I have decided that these would be suitable: 

Myriad Pro,

Prestige Elite std,

Impact,

Trebuchet MS,

Poplar std,

Corbel,

Franklin Gothic Demi,

Ebrima,

I have selected these because they are all bold and look similar to the texts off the boxing posters which I have studied. I think if i had used fonts which were too unusual, It would ruin the look I am aiming for. 

This is the end product what I ended up with. I have used the stars from the boxing theme as well as the lines at the top. I used a wine glass as a silhouette at the top of the piece. I placed it fairly central, which gives it a sense of balance. 

  This is my wine label for Rose'. I have gone for a faily similar colour scheme as my red wine label. I have kept consistency by using the same type of font. I tried to make the page graphics fairly simple but eye catching. I personally like the the bottle opener at the top as it centre's the piece well. Although my actual labels dont have the flavour of wine on them, nor the vin x logo, I am going to make a sub label which wraps around the bottle top. 

This is the wine label for my white wine. I think overall my labels keep a good consistency, with the font and illustrations running through out. I didn't want to use the same sort of shapes for each piece, so I played around a bit. As you can see, I used two gloves touching for the bottom line. I think it is perfect as I am keeping the boxing theme up. The yellow and red make a good contrast and also fit in with the theme well. 

I then needed to design a brochure for my wine. Very much thinking about the current boxing theme, as I don't want to spoil the consistency throughout, or else the work would be pointless. I need not only to study further boxing posters, but circus, freak show etc. They all have the same type of cartoony style to them. 

These are just some of the circus posters I found online. They all have a type of cartoony, vintage style. I am particularly fond of this as it is. The text is always bold, and is the centre of the piece always. I have noticed that stripes are used a in a lot of these pieces. They often have that old paper type style to it. They use this effect as they are meant to look vintage. I could think about using these effects if I want to create the same type of design.

These are a couple of posters for a freak show I found. Again it is in a very simple style. I want to create a similar style for my own pieces. The main factors I will be taking from this type of work are the illustrations and the type faces.

This is the first design I came up with for my front page. As you can see, I followed the boxing theme. I just dont feel that it had the cutting edge. I want to show all three of my wines to summarise the brochure. I did use thick type for this piece to keep consistency.

This is the final front page I decided I would use. I went for a more circus type theme. I have displayed the bottles well and added a cartoony effect. I also used the text type 'stencil'. I used this type because it looks genuine, as I have seen the text on boxing, circus posters before. I have added a grainy effect on the background also to give it the vintage effect.

This is the spin off page to my red wine. Basically showing the different angles and back label of the wine. And then a little caption to the left on what vin-x is trying to achieve. I kept the original dirty paper look as well just to keep consistency. I have created one of these spin off pages for each type of wine.

These are the 3rd and 4th pages of my spread. As you can see I have created another unique poster for my white design, keeping consistency with the typeface. personally think this is the best design of mine, as it represents the circus theme really well. I also like the illustrations I have added as well. I think I have given it a clean finish which ultimately looks proffessional. Again with the spin off page, I have kept the same type of design, typefaces, illustrations etc. It  is important to keep consistency.

Again, i took inspiration from my previous research with this design. I used soft colouring with the old paper effect. I used a different typeface this time using 'stencil'. It is a bold font which I feel could forfill demands and stay on target.

This is the final page of my brochure. I have kept the old paper type background. But on this one I have added an illustration of two arms wrestling. It keeps up the boxing theme, as well as looking proffessional. I have added some details at the bottom, of how to contact vn-x and how you'd go about purchasing any of their wines. Overall I think I hav created a brochure which looks professional, and slick. It keeps consistency with the layout of the spreads as well as the content.

One of my pieces in a bar environment.

This is one of my posters shown in a real bar. I wanted to make the piece authentic and I think it really fits in with the background. I am happy that I have created a professional design, which wouldn't look out of place in a real life scenario.