A Unique Case of Red Wine

At first glance the photo above is nothing unusual - a picture of a dozen bottles of red wine. But if you look at the labels you will see that each label has a slightly different design. These labels are the brainchild of Jeffrey Caldeway, a leading wine label designer in Napa, CA, who created these unique labels for St. Francis Winery's new wine called simply "RED".

RED is a reasonably priced wine aimed at the younger market, so Caldewey decided to do something completely different in order to catch their attention. He created 12 different red paint spatter pattern images for each of the 12 bottles in the case. So on the shelf in the liquor store customers will see different patterns on each bottle. To ensure that there were always 12 different labels in a case these labels had to be printed sequentially and then repeated down the roll so they could be applied to the bottles with their label applicator.

The only way to do this was through digital label printing. Now, to be clear Lightning Labels did not print these labels, but it is such an interesting use of variable image printing that I wanted to mention it here. It is a great example of leveraging digital label printing to enhance a brand. The overall design stays consistent, just one component of the label changes to give each label a unique look. When RED was launched it was ground breaking for the wine industry - no one had done anything like it before.

This is just one idea that you can use to create a truly unique label for your products. In the last issue of our newsletter, the Lightning Flash, I wrote about five product label ideas that can help you break through the clutter at the retail store. With digital label printing there are so many new opportunities for label and packaging designers that simply were not available a decade ago. Forward thinking companies like St. Francis Winery can really differentiate themselves by being one the first companies to leverage this new technology.