In 1824 the Sultan of Egypt bestowed a giraffe to the King of France as a gift of diplomacy. The giraffe, nicknamed Tall Horse by the thousands of Frenchman who lined the streets to witness the event of the giraffe travelling from the port of Marseilles to Paris, inspired the creation of the Tall Horse range of wines.

Launched specifically to capitalize on the ‘critter craze’ that hit the USA, Tall Horse is still standing tall. The unmistakable colourful labels stand out from the on-shelf clutter in retail stores making it instantly recognizable.

Design by Mark Ransome, Fireworks Design.

A word play on one of the most commonly asked questions ‘Why Not?, the Wine Not wine label was designed with the intention of evoking an inquisitive response from the consumer.

At an affordable price, this quality wine begs the question, why not?

The question mark graphic on the front label is a die-cut revealing the actual wine in the bottle.

Design by Mark Ransome, Fireworks Design.

Jordan Jelev from Bulgaria has been designing wine labels for more than ten years.

“In most of my wine labels you can see hand made calligraphy (digital or analogue) which is something like a personal style or signature – in the XXI century most of the designers use digital fonts, only a few do custom lettering…”

“First I do a simple sketch of the type – just to see how it goes as a composition, swashes etc., then I put it in front of my eyes and start reproducing the style but this time with black ink, penholder and proper nibs. After repeating this form 200 to 500 times, I finally get the hand lettered original. Wait 10minutes to dry…, then it is scanned and in some cases transferred to vector graphic or sometimes it is kept natural as it is – depends on what I want to do in my project”.

“Some of my wine labels are entirely hand made – I draw them with ink on a blank sheet of paper, then when ready I scan it for small digital processing, but preserving carefully the hand made style, then I make the printing plates – from hard polymer, using etching – then cover them with ink and start printing labels”.

We look forward to seeing more wine labels from Jordan in the future!