How does a logo and company brand evolve? Here is a look into the process with one of our clients.
We began with a home-based winery client, located in Edgewood, Washington. Here is the original label they used on their bottles. They wanted to print the labels themselves, and named each wine on their own.
The evolution of the design began with a trip to the client’s home. Their yard and vineyard is a haven for tiny frogs called Chorus Frogs.
We took many pictures in and around the yard and vines and the frogs were very prominent!
I used the above image to paint a pastel painting:
The painting was used to create a digital illustration of a Chorus Frog:
That illustration led to the thought for a wine label, with frog tracks around the bottle in a screen-printed effect. Could we do it?
First I developed the font for the text. To do this I used a semi-rounded typeface, but added additional round balls to the ends of each letter, simulating the look of frog toes.
We needed a few additional elements, tracks, to move around the bottle and bring some fun into play- who doesn’t love a fun wine bottle?!
Now came the tough part- how to get the design onto the bottle? For a large-scale wine producer, screening bottles is expensive, but not unheard of because the of discounts the can receive for doing many print runs. We, one the other hand, needed only a few bottles printed. Our solution- not printing directly on the bottle, but printing on waterproof vinyl that is made to adhere to the bottle itself, much like a wrap on a car. Thanks to Jackie at Signs Here printing in Bozeman for her assistance in getting the labels figured out. Our labels print in sheets that are easy to wrap around the bottle and position just like we need. Extra sheets for tracks and individual wine varietals are also made, so the Stacey’s can fully label each bottle. The water proof vinyl means they can wash and re-use bottles over and over each year.
Now with fun bottles and labels we just needed a way for the owner’s to share their wine making stories and photos with their friends and fellow wine makers. We found a free WordPress theme that works great for blogging and used their logo and some images to personalize it for them. It’s not our standard way of doing websites, but for clients who don’t want to spend money on a custom site, but who need help getting a basic site set up, this is the perfect solution.
We had no idea that the original photo would evolve to a website and labels, and rename the winery. I hope you like this example of looking at things differently and just running with it! Graphic design, illustration, photography and web design are all involved in our projects.