Label design

We’ve spent the best part of two years trying to come up with a design for our label. We’ve asked the help of three different designers and each one of them came up with some great designs but you know what? None of them were us. None of them made us think ‘yep, that’s it, they’ve nailed it.’ We never really felt an emotional connection with any of them. When you’re so close to your product, when you’ve spent so much time and energy on getting something inside the bottle just right, you don’t want the outside to be an afterthought. You want it to be perfect (in your own mind). And clients seeking perfection? Not the kind of clients we’d want if we were designers…

I used to do marketing back in the UK. I worked with a lot of designers and we developed some interesting ideas but there was always time pressure to get things done and there was always this tiny part of me that…shock horror…didn’t care that much, so you got it done on time. Of course I cared. I really thought I did. But when it’s your label and your identity, it’s just different, you care more. You care to the nth degree. I used to lecture an ex-employer that they should go fully organic. I didn’t get their reticence. Now I understand that tiny whisper of doubt when you’re so emotionally, financially and physically invested in something. You think it’ll be that much easier if only you were in charge but it’s not like that. You question every decision you make and you worry all the time that you’ve made the wrong one.

This one had us stumped. There are so many options and paths you can go down with labels – traditional, avant-garde, ‘natural’, amusing, artistic, clean, colourful, etc. Each one says something about you and what you’re about. If naming your wine is like naming your child, then these are the clothes you dress them in and even when people say, “I hate brands and how clothes look isn’t important, we just get them from the op-shop”, that’s still branding. That’s still what you want the world to perceive you as – ‘the eco-friendly op-shopper who HATES BRANDS’. It’s a bit like the South Park episode where the Goth says, “If you want to be one of the nonconformists all you have to do is dress just like us and listen to the same music we do.”

A cliché is to never work with children and animals. Sometimes people add family into that equation. Gilli’s brother and his partner have right-hemisphere brains, so the idea of asking them to have a think about our label, and if any ideas popped into their heads, then perhaps they could run them past us, wasn’t a bad one. In hindsight, we think it was a great one. When you’ve been so heavily invested in something and so committed to it, often the only people who are going to get what, where, how, why you’re doing what you’re doing are your family and friends. They watch and listen, offer support and help you through the bad times whilst celebrating the good ones. You can give a 100-page brief to a designer but they weren’t the ones we were speaking to the day after wallabies decimated the vineyard, or the late, severe frost in October 2011. They weren’t the ones who helped us pick our first, tiny crop in 2012 or planted 15,000 vines into what felt like concrete. Our families and friends were.

A day after we asked for their help, Andrew nonchalantly sent a text with an image on. I think I just said, “Yes.” It was remarkable how, when all seemed somewhat lost, that someone could throw the proverbial life-saver to you. We’re playing and tinkering with it now but we think we’re almost there. The finish line is in sight. We hope that people like the label, we think it reflects us, the area and what we’re trying to do down here. But you never know. It’s like our name; sometimes people just look confused and ask what it’s got to do with wine…