Hearts of Brooklyn Wine Labels

Hearts of Brooklyn

Red White and Bubbly’s Adam Goldstein hired ERA404 to design the labels for three new wines: The Hearts of Brooklyn Series. ERA404 previously designed the packaging for Brooklyn Wine Company’s Feliz Label Collection and Sparkling White, Altamira’s Sangiovese, and for Pangea’s Sparkling Natural Spring Water.

Illustration for the new pieces was provided by Ryan Seslow. The designs have been applied to packaging, posters, and billboards around Brooklyn.

Creative Shopping Bags

I’m a sucker for creative packaging design. I think that’s the reason my mom sends these forwards to me. There is so much creativity when it comes to these that I’m simultaneously envious that I didn’t think of them and reverential for the designers who did. But maybe that’s how we’re supposed to feel. If, one day, my company is hired by a client to do packaging design, I’m excited to see what sort of creative ideas we can design together.

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Duane Reade’s New York Packaging

It isn’t the first time people have incorporated bar codes into the design of things. In fact, I believe I saw three different periodical covers last year that used this same technique. So the concept is far from original.

But Duane Reade—which, to New Yorkers, is synonymous with pharmacy—recently took this one step further by working their product bar codes into iconic metropolitan imagery. The Chinatown Delight—which I always thought was either a extra surprise at the end of a massage, or the revelation that she’s both my daughter and my sister (Don’t get my reference? Then forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown)—uses a subway train. The Honey Roasted Peanuts uses a NYC cityscape. The Blanched Roasted Peanuts uses the Statue of Liberty. So while the imagery and concept are New York at it’s tritest, the integration of both the bar code and symbolism into the main graphic elements on this packaging makes it pretty unique and beautiful.

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