I am in the middle of my first major assignment for my TAFE visual arts design course. Our brief is that Enigma Distilleries, which currently brews beer wishes to enter the wine market. They anticipate producing five types of up-market organic wines and require a series of groovy labels created. We are to produce five Constructivist styled labels and five Saul Bass styled labels. Part of the brief is to show our research and ideas as we work through the design process.

The five types of wine are:

• Botrytis
• Cabernet Sauvignon
• Chardonnay
• Riesling
• Sparkling Wine

I started researching labels by wandering through the local bottle-shops. I know nothing about wines, but I do like a nice label!  I also searched extensively on-line. Please note that  in Google images there is a really cool feature of “similar”, so if you find an image you really like, you can filter your search based on images that maybe visually similar to that selected image. Mr Google does not always get it right, but it is a really handy feature.

I also started thinking about possible characteristics of each type of wine in terms of colours and personalities.

My thoughts for “Personalities” for Styles are:

• Riesling – light, fresh, zingy (fairy, sprite, Elf?)
• Botrytis – sweet, dessert, temptation, (Eve – danger/desire?)
• Chardonnay – elegant, refined, (queen, regal lady)
• Sparkling White – bubbles, celebration, (fairy, sprite)
• Cabernet Sauvignon – full-bodied, powerful, strong, dominant (Ring leader, bull fighter, Centaur)

My thoughts for “Colours” for Styles are:

• Riesling – green, lime, melon
• Botrytis – honey, alluring red,
• Chardonnay – white, silver, pale yellow
• Sparkling White – gold, bright yellow, white
• Cabernet Sauvignon –  deep red, maybe dark purple

The first series attempted I was inspired by the classic Constructivist design approach of simple exploding shapes:

Simple – Botrytis

Simple -Cabernet Sauvignon

Simple – Chardonnay

Simple – Riesling

Simple -Sparkling

This is what the collection looks like together:

The next series are based on the Russian Propaganda Posters which used a cyrillic font with two letters BO, CS, CH, RL and SW as the background. This font made the background consist of graphic shapes than recognisable letters.

I liked the way that the background interacts with the text. The effect is easy to achieve. Simply create a duplicate of the text. Colour one version white and the other black. Make sure the black text is on a layer above the white one. Then using magic wand select anywhere on the red background. The select the black text layer, then while the selection is current, choose “add mask” to the black text layer. Since the mask matches the background shapes, they will be hidden – revealing the white text.

The subtle addition of a wine glass typical of the style of wine I feel adds a nice element.

This is what the second collection looks like together:

The third series I thought I would try to use sorts of personalities that I thought might be associated with each wine type. I then used clip art as the basis for characters.

This is how the third series looks like as a collection:

Currently all designs are just ideas and definitely are a work-in-progress. However I am having fun and it is sure different using Photoshop with hard edges, shapes and text than applying local adjustments with a big soft brush.