District 8 Brand Identity + Packaging + UX

District 8 is an experimental wine project from one of our favorite winery clients, TH Estate Wines in Paso Robles, California. The ethos of District 8 is an exploration of California's 8th wine district, a growing region that spans San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

The brief, in a nutshell, said they had a wine label they'd been selling for some time that they now wanted to expand into an entirely new brand. A brand for unstuffy people who are still into fine, fine wines but want to enjoy them at a tailgate, instead of a tasting room.

In some ways this project was a redesign; the animation we created for District 8's social media highlights this. To one set of consumers, who'd been drinking TH Estates' District 8 wine already, we presented a wine bottle makeover.

In other ways, this was a brand launch from scratch. What was once a single SKU became a line of wines designed to work in concert, grabbing attention on the shelf. And it had a budget that precluded lots of special finishing often seen in the alcohol world. So we worked within the constraints: creating a flowing, graphic, and bold visual language that worked without foil stamping, embossing, or even a capsule. We also designed each labels' shapes to flow seamlessly into one another, so that when seen as a set, distinct colors could call out each SKU without pulling it out of the family.