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Packaging Great Grapes
Print
Packaging Great Grapes
Client
Cadence Winery
Audience
Retailers, Restaurant Wine Buyers, Distributors, Press, Discerning Wine Enthusiasts
Mediums
Photography, Branding, Marketing, Presentations, Printing, Packaging, Swag, Advertising, Newsletters
Team
Direction/Design: Michael Hilliard, Photography: Michael Hilliard/Ben Smith

Ben and Gaye are veterans of the Washington wine movement and masters at producing beautiful Bordeaux-style wines from Red Mountain. As unpretentious as their wines, they look only to make high-quality products meeting exceptionally strict tasting and aging profiles, and their brand needed to reflect their unassuming approach toward winemaking.

TL;DR
 
Client
Cadence Winery
Audience
Retailers, Restaurant Wine Buyers, Distributors, Press, Discerning Wine Enthusiasts
Mediums
Photography, Branding, Marketing, Presentations, Printing, Packaging, Swag, Advertising, Newsletters
Team
Direction/Design: Michael Hilliard, Photography: Michael Hilliard/Ben Smith

Ben and Gaye are veterans of the Washington wine movement and masters at producing beautiful Bordeaux-style wines from Red Mountain. As unpretentious as their wines, they look only to make high-quality products meeting exceptionally strict tasting and aging profiles, and their brand needed to reflect their unassuming approach toward winemaking.

TL;DR
 

Michael provides so much more than deep design and production experience – he also shows superb marketing intuition and savvy. As for Michael's palate, well, that's probably going to take some work...

— Benjamin Smith, Winemaker/Owner
PURPOSE
PURPOSE

Before developing a common motif to build the company's brand around, we took a clinical look at their history, projections of where they'd like to be in 5-10 years, their relationship with wine media and loyal customers, and most importantly, themes close to the owners. Ben and Gaye are musical (huge fans of Classical) and crazy about biking, the visual metaphors we played with tended to revolve around strings, instrumentation, motion (playing off a literal 'cadence'). We finally resolved on a violin scroll as the best visual representation, and metaphorically appropriate since it's the tuning part of the instrument (plus it's beautiful).

Before developing a common motif to build the company's brand around, we took a clinical look at their history, projections of where they'd like to be in 5-10 years, their relationship with wine media and loyal customers, and most importantly, themes close to the owners. Ben and Gaye are musical (huge fans of Classical) and crazy about biking, the visual metaphors we played with tended to revolve around strings, instrumentation, motion (playing off a literal 'cadence'). We finally resolved on a violin scroll as the best visual representation, and metaphorically appropriate since it's the tuning part of the instrument (plus it's beautiful).

    APPROACH
    APPROACH

    Packaging retail products are similar to designing posters, each label conveys an immediate graphic impression and then has to impart varying pieces of hierarchical information. The goal is always to keep visual emotions running high and close to the company message while having text and secondary graphic elements support that initial visual pop and fill in the technical side.

    Packaging retail products are similar to designing posters, each label conveys an immediate graphic impression and then has to impart varying pieces of hierarchical information. The goal is always to keep visual emotions running high and close to the company message while having text and secondary graphic elements support that initial visual pop and fill in the technical side.

    RESULTS
    RESULTS

    A prestige winery is branded from labels to cartons to sales kits to advertising to (even) bike jackets and coasters.

    A prestige winery is branded from labels to cartons to sales kits to advertising to (even) bike jackets and coasters.