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It's the journey to a new place, something undiscovered, where anything is possible, anything achievable, as long as you have a good friend along the way. With this, the first vintage from Bonamici Cellars, award winning winemaker, Philip Soo has created a unique and innovative wine, blending the care of an old world artisan with the boldness of a new world explorer.
Hired Guns created a brand and packaging design that tells the story of two good friends, taking off on the adventure of...
Zanatta is Vancouver Island's oldest estate winery, but their image did not reflect their rich heritage or the quality of their products. As a large portion of their production is focused on the production of sparkling wines, a visual identity that reflected this passion for bubbly was the logical approach.
With a new, modern brand and a sleek website to match, Zanatta is now poised to take advantage of their position as pioneers in the Island wine market.
All photography by Sean...
Lariana Cellars is a new winery in the South Okanagan. In fact, they're about as far South as you can get in the Okanagan... literally on the Canadian/American border, just south of Osoyoos, BC. They approached us early in the year needing branding, label design, and a few pieces of brand collateral. The brief called for something refined, sexy, and dark, with an expensive feel to it.
The label uses a gold foil, a clear foil, and embossing to showcase subtle components of the design...
Branding / Label Design / Naming / Print Design / Web Design
Longwood Brewery approached us to create unique brands for each of their beers.
Stoutnik
Russian Imperial Stout
We created the name Stoutnik for their Russian Imperial Stout. It seemed a fitting choice for a beer as dark as space itself.
The packaging design features a matte black bottle, prismatic foil stamp on the logo and wordmark, and an embossed Morse Code story about the beer.
The Big One
IPA
It takes time to craft a big, bold taste of this magnitude. For hundreds of years,...
Hired Guns Creative created two print ads for Hester Creek Estate Winery's Fall 2012 advertising.
These ads feature Hester Creek's two blended wines: Character Red and Character White. They were designed to place emphasis on the suggested food pairings for each wine.
As with much of our work, these ads are a product of collaboration between Richard and Sean Fenzl.
Saturna Island Family Estate Winery is unique within the "Wine Islands" region of British Columbia. There aren't very many wineries that count boaters and seaplane tours as a large part of their tasting room traffic. The winery's location - tucked away on one of the further Gulf Islands - means that they're not on the typical Vancouver Island wine route. They wanted a new look across their entire brand that would help emphasize their unique, pristine location and encourage...
Hired Guns Creative was brought in to create a new brand and label design for Tugwell Creek Honey Farm & Meadery, the oldest honey farm and meadery on Vancouver Island. They were dissatisfied with their old labels - they wanted a design that more accurately reflected their operation, philosophy, and products.
The end result is a clever, versatile identity that positions them very firmly as a wine competitor, yet distinctly apart from wineries, and a bright, vivid label that is sure...
Branding / Naming / Signage / Logo Design / Packaging / Print Design / Web Design
The Turyk family has long history of summers at Vancouver Island's Shawnigan Lake, and in the fall of 2009, became aware of a small vineyard and winery for sale in the nearby in the South Cowichan Valley. Translated from the local Coast Salish dialect, Cowichan or 'warm land,' is a unique terrior for growing curious new grape varietals. With a forty year history in BC's fishing industry, proprietors Tim & Colleen Turyk felt ready for a new challenge.
In memory of Tim's...
For those well-versed in the local wines of British Columbia, and specifically Vancouver Island, the name Venturi Schulze is known for achieving excellence through natural processes: they don't use pesticides, herbicides, or even irrigation. One of the oldest vineyards on Vancouver Island, they have been working diligently since 1988 to produce pure products: no pesticides, no herbicides, and no compromise in the vineyard or winery.
Hired Guns Creative began working with Marilyn Venturi in...
Enrico Winery is a new winery located in Vancouver Island's Mill Bay. They came to Hired Guns Creative in the spring of 2010 for a full branding package and label design for their first vintage, which was released in the summer of 2010.
The owner of the winery had two firm criteria for the branding: it had to incorporate imagery of a lion and it had to convey a regal feeling. Given these constraints, Richard felt that the best approach would be to create a logo in an illustrated, pen &...
Branding / Signage / Logo Design / Packaging / Print Design / Web Design
De Vine Vineyards is a new vineyard located on a hill top on Vancouver Island's fertile Saanich Peninsula. They came to Hired Guns Creative for a full branding package including identity design, label design, print design, signage design, and website design.
Visit: www.devinevineyards.ca
Situated at the south end of the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island BC, Silverside Farm & Winery produces blueberries as well as berry wines and fortified (port-style) dessert wines. In addition to fresh berries and produce, they also offer jams, jellies, and syrup made on their farm.
When Silverside approached Hired Guns Creative to redesign their website, Richard's thoughts ran immediately to a dark, lush design that would effectively highlight their products.
The website features...
Branding, Graphic Design & Web Design We bring the best in design to our clients. We provide design that lasts, branding that propels our clients, technology that innovates, and an image that evokes everything that your company is. This is our mission.
We can deliver everything from a new logo design, a custom website design, to a creative wine label design, but we are much more than that. We are a graphic design firm who is as passionate about your brand as you should be.
Journal
This blog post is going to be the first in a series of posts that share the research we've done on the topic of wine and winery branding over the last couple of years.
Earlier this year I...
Is the BC Wine Industry Heading to Disaster?
That is the headline of the scandalous-sounding article from Wine Access Magazine's online portal. But is it really so dire? And how can a winery...
We've been invited to give a talk at the Victoria PechaKucha Night on Thursday, November 25th. PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet...
This commercial for Quaker Oats ("Wake up, America...") came across my radar today via one of the daily design blogs that I read:
As I watched this ad, I couldn...
Why would I design my own logo?
Everyone who has started a new business runs into this question in one form or another:
How do I make my business distinctive and attractive to customers?
The answer...
If you're hiding indoors this weekend, trying to beat the heat, here are some interesting links to help you while away the time until it's cool enough to go outside again.
Interesting...
Drupal meet wine industry. Wine industry meet Drupal.
Drupal is an Open Source Content Management System originally developed as a community website by students of the University of Antwerp...
First, a definition.
Twitter Numbers - these are the 3 key numbers associated with the activity level and social network size on Twitter. The three Numbers are: following, followers, and tweets....
There are a plethora of smart phones out there with features that allow you to play games, stream media content, and do just about everything else. "There's an app for that" has become...
First, let's start with a brief glossary: rank: a generic term used to describe relative authority or placement with a search engine. If you have a higher/better rank, you will appear closer to...
