Sallinas

Design: the Labelmaker
Location: Bulgaria
Project Type: Produced
Client: Salla Estate
Print: Dagaprint.com
Photo: Jordan Jelev
Product Launch Location: Europe
Packaging Contents: Wine
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Glass bottle, Fedrigoni Self-Adhesives
Printing Process: Serigraphy, doming, raised varnish, digital offset

The Project
Salla Estate is a winery located in the Black Sea region of Bulgaria. Started as a small wine project with own vineyards, currently it evolved into one of the largest producers of the region. Winery’s portfolio grows too and the latest addition is called Sallinas – a fresh new brand created for the young generations.

The Message
Speaking about the generations, we face the main idea behind this wine label design. Based on an artistic image of two horse heads the label depicts the idea of family tradition. The two heads are a visual metaphor of father and son. Two generations, following one tradition. You probably wonder why horses?

Apart from their amazing wines, Salla is also very famous for their equestrian farm. Premium wines and unique horse breeds are the trademarks of the estate. This is why you could see two horseshoes in winery’s logo. In fact, this is one of the few wineries in Bulgaria where you could find vines and horses in one place.

The Label
As I said in the beginning, I wanted to tell a family story about tradition handed down from father to son. Two horse heads illustrate the two generations. I wanted to make them very detailed and appealing yet absolutely unique, modern and non-traditional though we speak about traditions.

I took my favorite iPad pro and did several attempts with one horse head, than with the other. They look somewhat separated or let’s say – not having strong connection between each other. So I decided to go for a next try and this time, using almost one calligraphic curve I succeeded to draw the two heads one in front of the other.

It was absolutely evident that there were two heads but at the same time I somehow made them look as one thing. This is what I felt about tradition – two generations, one goal. Then came the idea to use different colors for each head. Then I played with background color and at the end, I was able to deliver 6-7 color variations of one image – more than enough to have separate color code for each wine inside the range.

Another personal discovery in this project was the idea to use liquid gold effect to enhance the presence of the illustration and at the same time to ease its understanding.

My friends from Dagaprint.com did marvelous work with this label so I was surprised to find out that it actually looked even better than I expected. In combination with the liquid gold, I also played with raised varnish printed against very harmonious soft-touch background surface. The result was a fascinating colorful wine label design for a classy Burgundy style bottle. The bottle looked very attractive on the shelf, very recognizable, yet serious and inviting to grab it study all these flashing reflections from the liquid gold and the varnish.