Square, Plumb & Level

Well-Made Wines

Branding / Illustration / Graphic Design / Logo Design / Print Design / Packaging

About the Wine: Square, Plumb & Level (SPL) is about crafting high-quality, vineyard designate wine focused on wine drinkers with experimental and discerning palates. SPL espouses the idea that bigger is not always better, highlighting varietals/vineyards and winemaking methods that evoke a sense of place, subtlety over capacity, bottle by bottle. It’s about making the relationship between the wine drinker and grower even closer, and celebrating craft and quality in wines made well. The first of the line, a red blend, is sourced from the Peterson Family Vineyard located in the Bradford Mountain district of Dry Creek Valley in northern Sonoma County.

About the Design: The visual identity involved creating three main assets – a wordmark set in a classy serif typeface with a custom ampersand, an icon illustrating the three tools of the brand name locked up into a triangle, and a tertiary mark in which the wordmark, icon and messaging “Well-Made Wines” are in a circular emblem. The packaging is set in a deep navy reminiscent of a craftsman’s blueprints, driven home by the information about the varietal displayed in legal-style boxes and forms. The label – printed on a textured, linen stock – uses a blind emboss of the tertiary circular emblem, with an extra UV spot coat on top; the icons in the center are embossed, UV spot printed, and also printed in the navy pantone. The bottle’s back label has a custom-made map showing the vineyard that the wine is from. The top of the wine’s capsule and the cork feature the abbreviation, SPL, which were made out of scans of old, woodblock letterpress forms that were then taken and vectorized for print.

Client: Crafted Brands: “Boutique Wines, Small Batch Spirits”
Art Director, Designer, Illustrator: Russell Shaw
Copywriters: Bayard Crawley, Aaron Horton, Russell Shaw
Print Vendors: Tapp Label Company
Special thanks to Paul Sturgis, Julie DuRoss, Bill Knuttel