Ecco Wine Guide

A couple years ago I worked on a cover for Ecco called The Ecco Guide to the Best Wines of Italy. The original direction was to make a label for a wine bottle that held all the type (an idea generated in-house that was a pretty firm concept), and then print the label and place it on a bottle. Here is a mock up of the original comp in that vain.


To the credit of my art director, Allison Saltzman, I was told to try other solutions as well if I was so inclined. So below are a few other comps I submitted. These show more of an illustrative approach with the bottles & labels:



There are many wine guides in the market using wine stains and wine labels, but I could not find many that had a hand made element. For another approach, I painted small bottles not really knowing how I would use them at first. Watercolor paint seemed like a good fit since since it could evoke the wine-stained look without the cliche. I painted the bottles in different shades to cover all the wine varieties included in the book. In the end, with a revised title, stacking the painted bottles to contain the type turned out to be an effective solution.