New Year’s Eve beer and wine are drunk. It’s a good time to contemplate the new art of labeling bottles and cans before sending them for recycling.
You have to rely on comedians to capture the spirit of the times. The trendy subject of the labeling of containers of alcoholic products is so much in the Zeitgeist that Louis-Hugues Boisseau, the character of a simulated sommelier embodied by Louis-José Houde at Club Soly, refers to it when presenting his cider.
The product from his lands in Estrie “could almost look like wine, if it were better,” he says in the humorous capsule. He too must drink “very well with overalls and a little narcissistic disorder”. Its bottle stands out, with “a label from a local artist, who specializes in very small canvases”. In this case, a colorful apple tree.
Mr. Boisseau adds: “I wanted Marc Séguin, but I couldn’t reach him to be honest. »
The high-profile artist “dresses” the cuvées of Pinard et Filles and has certainly contributed to extending the reputation of the Quebec vineyard (and vice versa!). The result concentrates the basic rules of visual marketing of artisanal wine production with refined front sheets reproducing natural elements typical of the Séguin way (birds, a wolf, many fir trees, etc.). The Nuance de Gris cuvée is entitled to pure abstraction.
So now goes the life of labeling distilled and small-scale brewed spirits, from spirits to digestives, from wine to beer. The old European vineyards are used to giving themselves a brand image with an engraving of their château and the information prescribed by the SAQ regulations in a frontal position: the name of the vine juice, the appellation contrôlée or not, the percentage of alcohol, the quantity contained.
The new players, especially in the New World, have broken this tradition in a contemporary artistic spirit by betting on refined proposals, often illustrated by hand to make the product feel artisanal. The display obligation is not the same for private imports and local productions. They can therefore refer to the product’s basic information on the counter-label on the back of the bottle and express themselves fully on the front end.
Ezi Brand Design has been specializing in the packaging of alcoholic beverages for 25 years. The company can take care of all the components of the marketing of a wine that arrives here in large containers, choose the shape and color of the bottle, the name of the wine even sometimes and then the labels and their contents of course . Some of his customers dominate the SAQ branches: Torres, Woodbridge, Robert Mondavi, Mouton Cadet, Kim Crawford…
“We do all the work ourselves,” explains Patrick Plourde, artistic director of Ezi Brand Design, adding that the small artistic revolution is also shaking up mass products. “25 years ago, we invented castles for illustrations, sometimes by mixing together bits of existing castles. The great classics keep this reference, with the medals won in addition. Now our concepts are made by hand or with collages. The trend is towards simplicity, with a refined style. But obviously, it is not because a label is beautiful that the wine is good…”
Be guided by art
The beer reproduces the pattern. The great historical brewers keep their presentations unchanged, while the microproducers, now outnumbered, stand out with an original, artistic, daring brand image, promising that the content reflects the container.
This is the case of the Coop Sans-Taverne. It brews in Pointe-Saint-Charles, in Building 7, a former CN industrial building narrowly snatched from a developer who has grown apartments all around. The building houses a self-managed grocery store, workshops, an art school, a farmhouse, a bar and the brewery itself. It pours up to 40,000 liters per year, with about one load per week, rotating lagers, non-stop lagers, and a few fruity products.
Each beer receives a name and its own work. This is where Stéphane Truchon, head of promotion and events for the cooperative, comes in. “The selection is fragmented, because we let ourselves be guided by art”, summarizes the label curator in front of an impressive selection stuck to the wall of the back room of Building 7, with his machine for gluing cans. The faux art gallery totals two years of production, including a few “baseline” samples of the few classic Sans-Taverne beers in production year-round.
“We keep the same looks a bit industrial, the same typeface, but we go with different styles that all have a punch”, explains the breeder. The results, very dynamic and colorful, always figurative, are similar to the art of graffiti, manga too. In any case, the option contrasts with the choices of certain competitors who adopt imagery and stick to it: women, flowers, animals or monuments, for example.
To choose a label, Mr. Truchon can start from the characteristic of a new load, its name for example, then leaf through his portfolio, social networks or artist sites to find what is appropriate. The Sans-Calisse created this year is presented on the label as a “generous, but full of audacity, pale ale for the 10th anniversary of a really very hot spring”, that of the red squares of 2012. The chosen image shows outstretched arms holding cauldrons and spoons reminiscent of the great charivaris of the time.
A non-alcoholic beer was entitled to two children’s drawings collected. You don’t have to be 18 to illustrate beer. These have not been paid. The others get around $200 and a crate of 24.
The artist Félix Girard has been working exclusively for the Limoilou La Souche microbrewery since 2017. He produces almost all colorful illustrations, which could sometimes evoke comic book boxes, sometimes pages of children’s books, with references to nature, family leisure, sports, animals.
“I’m given a lot of freedom,” he said. The Souche team gives me a name, the type of beer, sometimes some guidelines. I treat each new label as a work. Moreover, collectors sometimes contact him to buy the 18 x 24-inch originals enhanced with an acrylic brush. He retains the copyrights to the images.
One originality per customer
Designer Simon Roy essentially earns his living by doing just that, designing labels. He specializes in branding all types of alcohol, beer, but especially wine for Polygraphe, his new Montreal company. He can choose an artist-illustrator or start it himself.
“Marc Séguin, he makes Marc Séguin on the bottles of Pinard et Filles, he says. We are forced to be original for each client, for each product. »
We owe him, in particular, all the colorful visuals of the Wein Goutte vineyard of the Montreal restaurateur Emily Campeau of the Candide restaurant, who became a winemaker in Austria, then in Germany. “These are not classic wines, so it shows on the label, of course,” says Mr. Roy. The challenge is to find a concept that lasts while adapting to new vintages. What is also essential is to properly communicate what is in the bottle. »
The fashionable way extends outside the marginal vineyards. Mr. Roy explains that the Boires import agency has decided to modify the labels of the old Domaine Bulliat (natural and certified organic) to adapt to the Quebec market, which is looking for playful images that break traditional codes. Simon Roy relied on illustrations with clear lines. The won bet convinced Bulliat to adopt the new visual on the French market, and sales jumped there too.
Polygraphe recently concocted the brand image of a grocery store wine by allowing itself in this sense. “We did not reproduce a natural wine label, but neither did we reproduce a castle with a typography serif. We have not distorted the codes, while bringing the product into modernity. On the other hand, it is clear that winegrowers have understood that they could pass off wines with certain faults with an attractive label. »
As Louis-Hugues Boisseau puts it so well: it could almost resemble wine, if it were better…