Top Source · Wine Label Design · Packaging · Washington State
Top Source Sauvignon Blanc — Wine Label Design for Columbia Valley
Extending an established wine label identity with a brighter visual character for Top Source Columbia Valley Sauvignon Blanc.
Following my earlier logo and label work for Top Source Walla Walla Valley Syrah and Columbia Valley Red Wine, the new white wine needed to belong unmistakably to the same family while establishing a personality of its own.
The Assignment
Adding a white wine without losing the family resemblance
The earlier Top Source labels had already established a clear visual language: a compact black brand panel, expressive hand-drawn lettering, generous white space and small illustrative elements used with restraint.
For the Sauvignon Blanc, the challenge was therefore not to invent another identity. It was to determine which elements should remain constant and where the design could change enough to give the new wine its own character.
That distinction is important when extending any packaging system. Consistency makes the range recognizable; variation gives individual products a reason to exist within it.
Project Scope
Wine label design within an existing brand system
- Wine label design for Top Source Columbia Valley Sauvignon Blanc
- Extension of the established Top Source label system
- Custom lettering integration and compositional refinement
- Hand-painted sun motif developed for the Sauvignon Blanc
- Color development for the white wine variant
- Label artwork development for print application
Visual Direction
A brighter expression of the Columbia label
I retained the flowing Columbia lettering already associated with the red wine and changed the emotional register around it. A hand-painted yellow sun rises behind the lettering, bringing warmth and luminosity to the composition while allowing the typography to remain the dominant element.
The blue accent provides another connection to the earlier Columbia Valley Red Wine. The addition of yellow gives the Sauvignon Blanc its own visual cue without requiring an entirely different design vocabulary.
The result is deliberately simple: recognizable as Top Source at first glance, but lighter and more radiant than its red counterpart.
Designing a range, not a collection of unrelated labels
This was the interesting part of the assignment: the Sauvignon Blanc had to be new without looking newly invented. Repeating everything would make the range monotonous; changing too much would weaken the Top Source identity. The design sits between those two extremes, using illustration and color to distinguish the wine while preserving the architecture of the existing labels.
Top Source Wine Labels
Part of a continuing label design project
The Sauvignon Blanc followed my earlier work developing the Top Source logo and labels for the Walla Walla Valley Syrah and Columbia Valley Red Wine.
Seen together, the projects show how a visual identity can expand across a wine range while allowing each bottle to retain an individual character.
Project Details
Client: Top Source
Wine: Columbia Valley Sauvignon Blanc
Region: Washington State, USA
Creative direction & wine label design: Ian David Marsden
Related design & illustration work
Top Source Syrah & Columbia Valley Red Wine · Graphic Design & Creative Direction · Commissioned Illustration · Case Studies
Wine label or packaging project?
I work across illustration, graphic design and creative direction to develop distinctive labels, packaging artwork and visual identities for individual products and wider ranges.
