Wine Label Redesign & Packaging Identity for Top Source — Washington State

The Redesign

The challenge was not to start again

I had already designed earlier versions of the three wine labels. They had an expressive, painterly quality and a hand-drawn character worth preserving.

The problem was an inherited brand element sitting above them: a heavy black Top Source header band with utilitarian lettering. It was highly visible, but visually disconnected from the more individual language of the labels beneath it.

The project therefore became an exercise in identifying what already worked and changing what did not. The expressive wine identities stayed. The hierarchy around them was rebuilt.

A successful redesign does not necessarily require replacing everything. Sometimes the more useful decision is knowing what deserves to survive.

01 · Master Brand

Removing the black band and rebuilding the Top Source identity

The first decision was to remove the dark header entirely. That opened the composition immediately and allowed the wine names, illustration and regional identity to occupy the label more naturally.

I developed a new Top Source identity around a clean serif wordmark and a mountain silhouette associated with Washington State. The mark is deliberately restrained: it establishes the producer without overwhelming the individual wine beneath it.

Metallic gold gives the master brand a material presence across the range while allowing the painted and handwritten elements to remain visually lighter.

The brand stopped sitting on top of the labels and started belonging to them.

02 · The Range

One family, three distinct wines

The aim was never to make the three labels identical. A Sauvignon Blanc, a Syrah-Grenache and a Walla Walla Valley Syrah have different characters and should not be forced into a rigid template simply for the sake of consistency.

Instead, the range shares a common visual architecture while allowing the individual wine identities to remain expressive.

03 · Individual Identities

Walla Walla and Columbia Valley, drawn differently

Each wine received its own handwritten treatment and painted motif. These are relatively small graphic elements, but they carry much of the personality of the range.

Walla Walla Valley Syrah uses a warmer red register and a freer looping wordmark. Columbia Valley Syrah-Grenache moves into cooler blues with a broader horizontal gesture. Columbia Valley Sauvignon Blanc is brighter and more open, centered on a yellow-orange sun.

The wines therefore share a visual grammar without becoming three color-swapped versions of the same design.

04 · Redesign as Editing

Improving the hierarchy without losing the character

Redesign work is different from starting with a blank sheet. The first task is to determine what should survive.

In this case, the hand-drawn language already had value. It was individual, expressive and recognizably different from more conventional wine packaging. Replacing it would have solved the wrong problem.

The weakness was the hierarchy surrounding it. Removing the heavy inherited header, introducing a quieter master brand and refining the relationship between wine name, region, varietal and illustration allowed the existing strengths to become much clearer.

The objective was not to invent a different product. It was to make the existing identity feel coherent.

05 · Final Label Artwork

Three labels built from one shared architecture

The finished artwork keeps the Top Source identity in a consistent position while allowing the individual lettering, motif, varietal and color treatment to define each wine.

Packaging System

Recognition without forcing uniformity

Wine shelves ask a range to do two things at once: belong together and remain individually recognizable.

The Top Source system balances those demands through three levels: a consistent master brand, individual hand-drawn wine names and motifs, and a shared label architecture that keeps the bottles visually connected.

The goal was not simply to make the packaging look more expensive. It was to make it feel more intentional — clearer in hierarchy, more coherent as a range and more faithful to the individual character already present in each wine.