DESCRIPTION The Optimist Wine Bottle CLIENT Self-promotion DATE December 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Greg Bennett, Design Director at Siquis Ltd PRINT CREDITS Studio on Fire TYPE CREDITS Avenir

QUANTITY PRODUCED 200 PRODUCTION COST $900 PRODUCTION TIME 3 Weeks PRINT METHOD Letterpress PAPER STOCK Strathmore 100% Cotton Permanent Adhesive NUMBER OF COLORS 1 spot OTHER Die-cut

Every year, Siquis, a creative agency in Baltimore, Maryland sends out a bottle of wine to their clients, with a custom design created by a different designer on the team. 2009’s responsibility came to Greg Bennett, who did a lovely and sophisticated play on “Is the glass half-full or half-empty?” with a sparing design that has an empty glass when the bottle is upright, but as one pours the wine into a glass, the graphic becomes a full glass — and if you look at the opening image above, you might notice that the full glass is not rendered in black ink, but it’s a tiny die-cut that reveals the bottle and its delicious content. Clearly, Greg has an eye for detail, and perhaps a little (healthy!) obsessiveness:

Wine bottles are notorious for their ever so slight taper. Because of this, I went through a process which I call “taper testing” to get the label to wrap just right. By adjusting the end points of the label along with the Bézier curves, I was able to get the label to naturally wrap the bottle and align on the back. This could not have been achieved with straight edges. All in all, I went through about 75 labels before I was happy.

Photographs by Apparition Studio