9 steps for designing luxury packaging
Typejockeys co-founder Michael Hochleitner walks through a recent identity project for Trapl Wines.
05. Lettering and type
Type design gets a lot of attention in all our work. Most of the lettering we used for the bottle was inspired or adapted from historic typefaces, with a few modern touches. All the letters were drawn to fit the size of the frames, as we knew composition was going to be a challenge.
06. Legalities
In Austria, the government has very strict laws about how big the obligatory information must be printed. The alcohol level must have a cap height of at least 5mm for example. This stage was a case of meticulously going through the designs and making sure everything was legal.
07. Final adjustments
The layout was very detailed with thin lines that we had to perfect. Separations had to be made for two offset printing plates, foil embossing, blind embossing, and flexo printing. It was of course a delicate job for the printer to adjust the different techniques to align everything perfectly.
08. Choosing capsules
The copper colour of the capsules (the foil at the top of the bottle) was chosen very carefully to match the foil printing on the labels. We opted for a simple capsule layout in the end, to balance with the busyness of the label design. They were printed in black with a flexo technique.
09. Additional applications
We designed a matching wine box, using some illustrations from the labels but also developing new elements with bigger proportions. The wine box was printed with a metallic offset colour as we wanted the box to fit in with the bottles, but also look visually compelling from a distance.
Words: Michael Hochleitner
Before establishing Typejockeys, Michael Hochleitner studied media science in Vienna. He left Austria to study typeface design in the UK, and received a MA from the University of Reading in 2008.
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