Package Design
Each puncture in the MFN monogram is unique — as idiosyncratic as the winemakers, growers and viticulturalists that made the wine happen. Disrupting the landscape of flat, predictable wine, each of their stories builds toward a larger one.
Original artwork was created with a pushpin, pressing through heavy Bristol paper, and subsequently photographed. The photography is then printed with a sculptured emboss that emulates the three-dimensionality of the source artwork.
/ Art Direction / Design / Print Production Management
// Photo Accreditation (original artwork) // Dina Mande
Package Design
It all comes back to that story. Eric and Lisa Jensen had just started farming Booker Vineyard back in 2005 or so. And the esteemed father of Paso Robles cult cabernet, Stephan Asseo of L’Aventure Winery nextdoor, came to be a good friend and mentor. He would call up the winery and say, in his lovely accent, “Eric... it’s your favorite neighbor!”
“Of course I know it’s you, Stephan. You’re the only French guy I know!”
This wine is an homage to the neighbors who made it possible.
On the artwork /
There is a comfort in the tactile nature of the tin can telephone. It suggests an immediacy. A requirement for tangible proximity. You can’t very well call up your friend on a tin can if you’re not pretty close by. And with the all-too-easy access to so-called relationships over text message and Snapchat and Instagram et al., our culture permeates with collective longing for a connection more intimate.
Who’s house do you want to show up at, on a momentary whim, to share an evening and maybe a great bottle of wine? Your favorite neighbor? How many of those do we really have, anyway?
We know who they are. And they’re pretty remarkable.
/ Art Direction / Design / Print Production Management
Package Design
Booker sought a label redesign for its Grenache blend Rosé, a best-seller in the winery’s tasting room. The winemaker, perhaps in defiance of typical approach to Rosé, actually adds some red wine to this wine.
Yeah yeah yeah. In making Rosé, red color seeps off of the skins for a little while and then you stop the process before the wine hits full-blown Red. But then, to add some Syrah after all that? Trippy. There’s more to that story.
Take a deeper dive here.
/ Art Direction / Design / Illustration / Print Production Management
// Photo Accreditation // Dina Mande
Partnering with Patagonia, Tablas Creek Vineyard tells its origin story, educating guests through an apparel line. The series highlights the founder’s vision: to introduce Châteauneuf-du-Pape style wine to the United States, exploring the burgeoning possibilities of biodynamic vineyard practice.
/ Art Direction / Design / Hand-lettering / Illustration
Canned wine is always a good idea.
Art Direction / Design / Illustration / Copywriting
Print
This refresh to must! charities original branding retains the spirit of the non-profit's inception, while redefining the visual language through which it tells its stories. Print communication materials shown, including 2017 Annual Report.
/ Art Direction / Design / Illustration / Print Production Management
// Photo Accreditation // Barry Goyette
Brand Identity / Package Design
Torrin Vineyard of Paso Robles, California, renowned for its expressive prestige Rhône varietals, sought a unique identity to formalize its first foray into Burgundy: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Lagom speaks to an approach of simple authenticity — "Enough is as good as a feast."
/ Art Direction / Design / Print Production Management
Website Design
Visual brand management of packaging, signage and print material at the winery expands to a custom responsive website redesign, utilizing the WineDirect CMS to allow for effective eCommerce and point of sale integration.
You should really read that paragraph on their homepage. It says it all.
/ Art Direction / Design / Project Management
// Photo Accreditation // Taryn Dudley Photography
Print / Retail Display / Events
Elevated the presentation of this specialty beauty brand for print, events and merchandising display at some of the world’s most prestigious beauty retailers including Sephora, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York.
/ Art Direction / Design / Project Management / Display and Print Production Management
Advertising
Campaign concepts for new business pitches at Giant Creative Strategy, the largest privately-owned pharma ad agency in the US.
/ Art Direction / Design
Brand Identity
Logo redesign package for California Central Coast’s most popular recreational rental service, based in tourist-friendly Pismo Beach.
/ Art Direction / Design
Brand Identity / Creative Strategy
DEL Ozone, a global industry leader in environmentally-friendly water purification, was ready to shed dated branding of its inception in the 70s and embrace a comprehensive, modern redesign.
/ Creative Direction / Design / Project Management / Print Production Management
// Photo Accreditation // Barry Goyette
Brand Identity
Lifestyle, editorial and athletics photographer.
/ Art Direction / Design
Brand Identity
Web forum for managing personal wine cellars and for networking with other collectors (logo design and web concept development).
/ Art Direction / Design / Copywriting
Logo Design
/ Symbol Development / Design
Ok. A little history time :)
I’m embarrassed to say: as of 2004 I’d never heard of the typographic designer Ed Fella.
I was soon to learn that I’d soon be learning about him — in my upcoming Design History class, but I hadn’t gotten there yet.
/
I was in Advanced Typography at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and for some reason I’d decided that it made sense to take it a year ahead of time. I really don’t remember the rationale — I think mostly, I was just itching to take a class from this new professor I’d heard so much about, Katherine McCormick.
The first day, she looked around the room at all of us, and told us that this was the class where we were to learn that we could break all the rules of typography. Gulp.
But, in order to do this properly, we had to first KNOW all the rules that were about to be broken. Double gulp.
I swear, she looked right into my eyes as she said that. I was an unfamiliar face, amongst all these seasoned juniors and seniors around the room. And truth be told, I didn’t feel that I had even the slightest handle on basic typography yet, given my first introductory course: I hadn’t taken that first class from Katie, so it really didn’t count. Was I out of my league? Probably. But...
I’d do my best..?
Gulp.
To my abject surprise, my first set of projects was well received. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but whatever it was, it seemed to be working.
And then, we were assigned The Poetry Project.
We were to choose a poem, any poem: and design a poster that utilized typography to illustrate it. I chose Sylvia Plath's "Black Rook in Rainy Weather".
How on earth do you translate a poem into some sort of typographical illustration? I had no idea. So I just focused on the poem itself, memorized it, went out to a desolate corner of a black nighttime Morro Bay, California wetland in the fog, inches deep in soggy beach diatrus.
And recited the poem, to the dark night.
Would this yield any fruit? Who's to say. Sometimes you gotta throw spaghetti at the wall.
//
Sure enough, a few days later. I sat down at a computer in the lab, and out popped a composition. It was almost fully formed when it all came out, I can't really explain it. I wish I could. Who knows how these things happen, the brain is a mysterious organism.
I've since trained myself to approach creative problems in a way that allows these sorts of insights to manifest naturally — I've learned that they must be curated, given all imagined resources, and then given room to organically come forth on their own. I'm not smart enough to do this by myself. The subconscious part of my brain is more robust than my conscious mind can encapsulate, so I gotta take advantage of it when I can.
///
Ed Fella was invited to come in, and perform a critique in our class.
He identified my Plath poem as the first amongst the work, hanging amongst my classmates’ projects on the wall, to delve into — “Let’s start here.” He asked me about my process, and of course I immediately blanked.
So green. I didn't know what I was doing, let alone how to explain it. Cool.
But that experience was the seed that was planted — to begin to explain how I do what I do. It's taken some time for me to deconstruct my creative process, but this is where it all starts. Gotta start somewhere, and I'm pretty proud of where I came from.
