OUGD603 EXTENDED PRACTICE - WINE LABEL - PERSONAL EXPERIMENTATIONS

Explanation
Even though the client was really happy with the design that was created for them, and it fulfilled the brief exactly, I wasn’t completely happy with the way it had turned out aesthetically, so decided to create some personal designs that also fulfilled the brief in their own way, but to different extents, and not in such an obvious and direct way. The aesthetic and theoretical research that was undertaken was still extremely relevant to these designs, and the type hierarchy definitely influenced the designs in deciding an order or prominence of the type.

Influences
The designs by Kissmiklos and Eszter Sarah, and Nora Rohmann and Peltan-Brosz Roland really influenced the aesthetic design decisions being made in these experimentations, as they reflected a contemporary yet still traditional wine label.

Initial Experiments
Initially a much more contemporary and abstract design was explored, using a type as a background pattern, however it became clear straight away that this wasn’t in fitting with the atmosphere of the wine at all, appearing much too contemporary and nowhere near vintage enough.

Drawing
From the aesthetic research that was undertaken it was discovered a lot of the illustrations on the wine labels were very illustrative and hand drawn, and as this reflects much more of a hand made, vintage appearance, this was the next concept that was explored.
The imagery of grape vines was used as the base for the design, as this created a relevant and almost pattern like design which was well suited to the product being wine. This also allowed for a frame to be created for the text within the label, which held the whole design together.

Bird Placement
After showing these new designs to the client they were really enthusiastic about this development, and said that they preferred it to the original design that was created which was exactly to the brief they had provided.
The only comment they had was that the bird needed to be included in the design, so initially it was placed upside down at the top, as if it was in the grape vine. However, the client preferred it to the the right way up, as more of a stamp or icon as opposed to part of the background illustration.
Different shades of purple were explored for the grape vine pattern to see which worked the best. Purple was chosen as the main colour as this is a close colour to red wine (red wasn’t chosen as it could look too much like blood). Different shades of purple were shown to the client to see which they preferred, and they thought that the dark purple colour worked the best, as it allowed the pattern to stand out the most. Lighter shades were shown to them as well as in the initial brief they provided they said that they wanted to use muted colour tones.

Foiling
It was discovered in the aesthetic research that foiling was common amongst wine label designs to make them appear of higher quality. Foiling was therefore experimented with as a means of adding colour to the wine label in an alternative manner.
Gold, Silver, Copper and Red foiling was experimented with, both for the grape vine illustration and the text and bird, to see which allowed the text to stand out the most. 

Peer and Client Feedback
After showing the foiling experiments in the different colours to my peers, we came to the conclusion that the red foiling on the text and bird was the most successful solution, allowing the text to stand out the most and not appearing too overwhelming.
This development was shown to the client, and they were really pleased with this design decision, and agreed that the red foiling worked really well.
However, upon showing this design to the client they decided they also wanted to definitely include the coat of arms as well, so the design had to be slightly adjusted to fit the coat of arms in. The coat of arms was also slightly simplified as well, as on such a small scale you wouldn’t be able to see the detail as clearly.

Final digital design
This is the final design for the wine label with the addition of the coat of arms. The client suggested to place it in several different places (next to the bird, below “grape snatcher”, either side of “red wine”, and in the bottom left corner), however the placing that was the most successful was either side of “red wine”, as it created balance and symmetry in the wine label, and there was just enough space for it. It also didn’t compromise the prominence of the bird, and didn’t get lost in the grape vine pattern either.
This design will still include the red foiling on “grape snatcher”, “red wine” and the bird as was previously experimented with.