The Labelmaker – Contour Wines – Abstract Wine Label Design

Contour Wine – an Abstract Label Design with Custom Vineyard Map

Creating abstract label design is always difficult but also very inspiring adventure for every designer. Contour makes no exception in this. Created exclusively for Karabunar Winery, Bulgaria, this new wine label turned into reflection of their famous wines and incredible terroir and vineyard location. The range depending on vintages consists from no less than 7-8 wines including, whites, rose and reds. I call it a long one and therefore difficult for creating recognizable color scheme for each of the wines in the range.
From the very beginning at the early stages of brainstorming we decided to create abstract label design based entirely on modern vector illustration of Karabunar’s vineyards. I was provided with satellite photos of the vineyards and it took me a few days to create really nice contemporary image showcasing the vineyards’ plots in different colors and filled with elegant linear patterns. To enhance them even more I decided to add thin layer of transparent raised varnish and as a final touch in my picture I created delicate topographic lines to make my stylized map look more natural and realistic. We printed them with different colors of hot-foil to make the whole wine label shine.
Exactly these lines inspired me to name the whole range Contour. It is very popular easy-to-remember word closely related by its meaning with elegance, precision and definition – some of the best keywords for the wines made by Karabunar Winery.
The ‘canvas’ for this abstract label design was a very beautiful and gentle paper by UPM Raflatac – the Antique White. I also picked the enhanced version of the paper that has very strong adhesion to the glass bottle surface and also provides maximum resistance to moisture and ice because half of the Contour range is for white wines and rose which definitely spend most of their lives in fridge or ice bucket.
The bottle for this wine series is classic conical bottle. We used cork sealing and PVC capsule in different colors featuring the Contour logo.”