When Adam Goldstein approached ERA404 about designing labels for his new wine company, Brooklyn Wine Company, I have to admit I was pretty excited. If given a chance, I’d drink a beer over wine anyday, but I do really enjoy red wine. I, as with most uncultured palates, nearly always select a wine for its label rather than what I should’ve read in a Wine Connoisseur periodical. Even after having gone on a tour of Taittinger’s operation in Reims, France, a few years back, I just haven’t learned (or cared to learn) how to select a wine based on varietal, region or manufacturer. I think my stubbornness comes from the misconception that a cultured palate comes with an expensive taste…and I’m just not willing to part with money that easily.

Adam, as with all great thinkers, has a pretty great view of how a wine label should be designed. When we started putting together his wine shop (Red White and Bubbly) site, we gave him the design for a wine shop. He absolutely loved and hated it. “What you’ve given me is a wine shop site,” he said. “And while it’s perfect, it’s not what I’m looking for.” “But it is a wine shop,” I replied. “Yes and no. I’m not selling wine, exclusively,” he said. “I’m promoting the idea, the spirit and vibe of Brooklyn.”

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So I’m 29-years-old, now, and even though I’ll perpetually refer to myself as a kid, I’ve decided that I’ve lived roughly one-third of my life. Sandy Ford, my guidance counselor in high school, taught me about the value of 5-year plans and setting up processes for achieving my goals in life.

My five-year plan after I graduated came to fruition three years earlier than I’d expected. My list was quite short back then. I simply wanted to run my own business, be successful at what I did, and love every second of it. In 2002, two years after graduation, it happened. The network that I’d built while dodging bullets through the dot-com boom had paid off and before I knew it, I had more work moonlighting than I did at my deskjob. I’d survived the collapse of two companies and risked it all to accomplish this dream.

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I just finished a new original crossword puzzle called “Artistic License” (PDF). It’s about a “Friday” in terms of the New York Times Difficulty Rating System (read: medium). I hope you like it. Comments are always welcome.

>> All My Puzzles
>> Artistic License (PDF)

I’ve always been fascinated by the process more than the outcome.
A roundtrip’s destination is never as fun as the journey there.

I think that’s part of the reason I got into design as the journey to the final pieces—the exploration—is really the most illuminating part. Along the way there are hundreds of tiny little decisions that twist and contort the project. Each direction that’s taken could conceivably change the entire work drastically (The Sound of Thunder of the visual arts world). And when you pull your head up from your desk at 4am, hours before the project is to be shipped to the printer, you look at the final piece as the culmination of these infinite decisions. The creativity doesn’t lie in the product, but rather the journey.

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