After navigating through the ABC application process it was time to finally design my label. Every label on an alcoholic beverage must be approved by the TTB, a process which used to take around 90 days but has recently come online. I had some firm ideas about the layout (simple) and color scheme (red, black and light gray).
I sat down at my outdated picture editing program and began fiddling around with the nascent Ritual Wine label and logo. I knew the word Ritual would be inside a rectangle (just like about 5,000 other logos. Hey, it works). My first draft was the 'logo' in red on black, with the description of the wine in light gray on a black background. Legible but very boring. I needed something spicy. Maybe... a gargoyle?
I'm not sure why a gargoyle popped into my head. Gargoyles are somewhat ritualistic I guess. I've always liked them, as they're threatening, but they're on our (i.e. humans) side, as their function back in the Middle Ages was to scare away evil spirits. Since gargoyles generally have pretty scary facial features, I wanted an image showing a gargoyle silhouette, wings arched, ready to take off. No face.
My vast internet canvas (comprising a cursory look at Google image search results) proved fairly fruitless. My girlfriend Adina, a librarian, looked further for me (it's what she likes to do) and, well, there just don't seem to be that many silhouettes of gargoyles. There are a lot of shots of stern gargoyles, cartoon gargoyles, monster gargoyles and of course gargoyles on the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
I let the label ideas rest for few days. One of the upsides of starting out in the wine business is the incredible length of time between buying the initial lots of grapes and the many months that transpire until you can sell some wine. This has provided a nice cushion in allowing me to proceeding at a leisurely pace in terms of getting legal with The Man (Mans? Men?), and similarly I had plenty of time to think about labels, logos, fonts, images, etc.
A few days later Adina had another idea. She is friendly with an ex-boyfriend, Geoff, who is a graphic artist by trade; she'd mentioned my label design travails and Geoff had remarked that he would be happy to help me out, taking payment only in wine. Fantastic! Not only could I barter some inventory, but the inventory wouldn't even exist for at least another year.
I had finally located a gargoyle image I liked. It turned out to be a photo of the "Stone Master Gargoyle", an actual for-sale animatronic gargoyle that "moves his head, unfurls his wings, and coughs smoke from his mouth." Only $8700. It seemed like a great little toy to keep around for certain occasions if one was extremely wealthy and/or profligate but in any case it was a nice looking image, plus it was in the perfect color - shades of gray on a black background, so I could slip it onto my label with minimal photo editing. Although, like all gargoyles, this guy had an extremely menacing expression, I reduced the image to where the dominant feature were enormous wings stretching upward from our hero's back. So it was a sort of mini-gargoyle, almost like a logo. As a logo I think t it's pretty trick - I'm partial to a gargoyle with a nice pair of wings.
I now had a working image design, featuring "Ritual" in red on black surrounded by a red rectangle, with my little gray gargoyle buddy underneath followed by some descriptive text .in (lighter) gray. I forwarded it to Geoff, who discarded everything and sent me his vision of the Ritual Wine Company label.
I had mentioned my gargoyle fixation to Geoff and of course my mockup had the miniature animatronic gargoyle proudly spreading its wings so he ran with the idea. He'd spiffed up the Ritual logo, using a semi-gothic font and vastly improving the graphics. The improved logo and graphics were imposed on a large grimacing gargoyle face which spanned most of the label. It was very effective as perhaps a horror movie poster or religious iconography (scary division). As a wine label i.e. something you'd want on the table while you were eating and enjoying that fine Ritual wine, much less so. I had to respect the purity of his vision but of course it wasn't going to work.
I decided to shift gears away from gargoyles. I briefly toyed with a griffin, another mythical creature perhaps more sympathetic looking than a gargoyle (still with good wings, but with the body of a lion), but after some cursory research it seemed griffins were already in wide use, especially among various German duchies and assorted brand names.
My next thought was an insect. Not a repulsive creepy insect
but an insect with a positive image, maybe a butterfly or bee. I dismissed this
quickly, as it struck me as both clichéd and slightly cutesy. After exchanging
a few emails on the subject Geoff and I decided to try
After some back and forth we came up with an attractive
design, basically a nice sunset at
My attorney friend Dave reminded me to make sure we had the
right to use the
I didn't hear back from RobfromCanada so I resent the email. Geoff also sent him an email asking for permission to use the image. There was no response from Rob so I decided to move on. Geoff has an account at an image bank; it's generally $18 to purchase non-exclusive rights to an image. I was a little surprised he hadn't gone there in the first place instead of just lifting something from Flickr.
The image bank had hundreds of
After we'd settled on a new
After complimenting us on our concept he dug further:
This is an intriguing opportunity and
I am open to discuss some non-exclusive rights to this photo and would
like to know where it will be used in conjunction with the label on the bottle,
ie - wine cases, letterheads, website, posters, etc. What is the expected
quantity output, and also the duration of use you are interested in?
This sounded complicated. I didn't want to engage in a protracted Q & A with Rob, I didn't want to negotiate terms of use with him and I didn't even want to ship him a case of wine after getting the other image for $18. Although his photo was slightly better than the one we selected it wasn't better enough. Thus, no to Rob, yes on the purchased image. The front label design was complete.
When you sell wine in the
Also in the offing, which I would rate as stupid beyond belief, are requirements to post caloric and nutritional content on the bottles. So far this last requirement has not been implemented but it is being seriously discussed.
The back label was much easier than the front - we threw in
all the required stuff, added the website address (ritualwine.com) and put the
logo on top, with the vintage and varietal below. The label, she is done and
submitted. I hope they like it, legally speaking.
The "Stone Master" gargoyle. Looks a little like a flying bunny rabbit here
The gargoyle idea translated to a foreboding label
And here we go. Note proper vintage date finally.