BEHIND THE DESIGN: Step By Step

Life is taking each step as it comes. For Project Wine, life is wine and making great wine is a step by step process. In any experience, the most challenging aspect of implementing a redesign is the ability to get everyone on board a new look and feel and, in this case, even a complete new brand angle.With Step by Step, it wasn’t only about creating a refresh, but developing a redesign that would allow the brand to go in a new direction with a more millennial-based target market.

Thus there lied the challenge of not just creating something fresh and new that would really make an impact on the shelves, but something that all the internal and external stakeholders could agree upon.

“The motivation from the beginning was to create a rebrand (by) taking it in a different direction (and) to be able to have fun with it as well,” said designer Alicia Zerella from Newaje Studio. “We wanted to target a younger audience. So looking at something that’s going to really stand out on the shelves and be quite eye-capturing and, even though the old label was quite graphic, it still had a lot of complexity with it, lots of different elements. “So we were looking to strip that back, wanted to create something quite simple and powerful because we knew that it was going to have quite a large range. Something also that could be manipulated, have a different look for all the different varieties but still hold a very strong, consistent visual element.”

It was designed for the new generation wine drinkers who look for brands that invoke and embody a younger flair, and this redesign allowed just that, with a new sense of modernity and youthful appeal. “There was a lot of playing around in the early stages, that obviously coming forward from the name Step by Step, it was playing around with the elements of the E’s,” said Zerella. “In the end, it was pulling that letter apart, taking that visual look and breaking it up to form the steps.”

It was realistically like launching a whole new brand altogether, so the re-design brought about the need to step back and re-launch the brand.

The impact which that induced has been huge, because it made people already engaged with the brand really stop and take notice while those who weren’t familiar with it, got to experience, to them, what would appear as a whole new fresh brand. Looking outside the square is a passion for Zerella as she tries to break the stigma that traditional looking labels equate to value. “Time goes by and the new wine drinkers of today, they’re a different group, a different generation of people that have a lot more focus on aesthetics and can easily be sold a book by its cover,” she said. “So it’s really critical to make sure that wine labels and brands are moving along with other markets out there.” Therefore, it allowed everyone to be riskier in creating a classy but also fun, modern label that appealed to the target drinkers.

In receiving the Best Package Redesign award in the 2021 PACKWINE Design Awards, Zeralla said that it was “great affirmation” for the work they had done and the direction taken. “It gives us confidence as well then to keep pushing the boundaries with the designs that we’re doing and keep stepping out of that traditional box because when we get the support, like winning this, the proof’s in the pudding about the direction we’re going in,” she acknowledged.

Post adapted from the Grapegrower & Winemaker June 2021 edition, reporting by Stephen O’Loughlin.

WATCH THE FULL 2021 PACKWINE DESIGN AWARDS PRESENTATION

 

Best Package Redesign

Entries include images of the former package along with the redesigned package. The redesign must have been commercially available in 2020-2021. Packages will be judged on the successfulness of the redesign, their visual appeal, design functionality and appropriateness for the price segment.

 

SPONSORED BY Q-PACK

Q-Pack is a key packaging industry supplier in Australia and New Zealand, representing the world’s leading brands in packaging equipment including Borelli, Enos, CIMEC & more. Their range showcases the latest technology developed from overseas manufacturers to ensure your business can access high quality and reliable equipment.

Q-Pack pride themselves in being experts in the beverage industry and strive to support you in finding the equipment that will best fit your business now but also accommodate future expansion.

With multiple locations across Australia and New Zealand Q-Pack are best placed to quickly supply and meet all of your requirements, and their full-time technical staff also ensure that the after sales support that you receive is second to none.