Don’t Tell Mum!
I had the opportunity to participate in a design contest on Oditi; a platform where designers can participate in different briefs for incentives such as prize money or exposure! For this contest, the brief was to design a wine bottle label targeted at young people ages 18-28 in the US and Australia (the drinking age in Australia is 18). Here’s a snippet of the brief:
“This product is being positioned as Ike & Molly making a different style wine to what Louise would approve, doing something mum would not necessarily have done behind her back / without her knowing of it. From this concept, the name of the wine is ‘Don’t Tell Mum’”
Don’t Tell Mum wanted a label that would stop folks in their tracks when walking through the wine aisle. The first thing I did was go to the grocery store and take a stroll through the aisle to see for myself what a typical wine bottle looks like. I’m not much of a drinker so I needed some context. Most of the bottles in the aisle had labels with dark muted colors or they used a design on a white background.
Photo by Mathias Reding
Following this trip I decided that I would go bright and colorful for my design and chose a bright pink and blue color palette that would stand out amongst the standard wine bottles. I’ll admit, I went rather feminine for this design with some imagery that reminds me a lot of Polly Pocket and Barbie!
The final label design
The most important elements of this design, for me, were the title of the wine “Don’t Tell Mum!“ and the party girl imagery. I illustrated the woman in the strapless dress in Procreate and then brought everything over into Canva to put the design together. I decided the woman should be saying something that indicated she wanted us to keep a secret. “What mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her“ reminds me of the common idea of “do it and ask forgiveness later”. How many times did we do something our parents wouldn’t necessarily approve of without asking their permission, only to tell them in passing later?
I’m very happy with the final design and I can’t wait to see the results of the competition! Early voting is open now over on Oditi and you can vote for me there!
