Ellement Wine + Spirits – Re-imagined Textures for a Familiar Wine Shop


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Ellement Wine + Spirits is an independent wine shop located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba within the Forks Market. The shop, beyond offering a wide selection of well-loved vintages, puts significant effort into sourcing natural and biodynamic wines from all over the world, and are just as passionate about sharing the stories behind each of the bottles they bring in-store. Tasked with creating a unique identity, mood and tone of voice for the brand, we looked toward the product and the process of wine making for inspiration.

 

Photos by Pauline Boldt.

Representing the Essence of the Brand

Due to the location within a prime retail location (The Forks Market in Winnipeg) the owners felt it was important to include three tiers of information in the logo – their name, type of business, and location. The monogram condenses the identity, serving as a flexible canvas upon which colour could be applied, allowing for a type of wine, emotion, or occasion to be expressed.

As our process often undertakes a series of tangible visual experiments, with Ellement Wine + Spirits, we sought to create a unique hand-drawn texture that would reflect the notion of terroir – the place and time imbued in each bottle of wine.

Communicating a Mood

By combining charcoal and water and allowing the water to define each stroke, we were able to achieve an organic, uncontrolled texture – recalling the process of cultivating and making the wine. The texture was then abstracted to create a unique brand element that could be used on multiple platforms both tangible and digital. Hand drawn elemental textures were paired with a classic typeface to suggest a contrast between old world and new world wine ideologies.