Low Road

Package Design / Branding

The Idea

The goal was to create the brand and packaging for a Scottish wine company that would be eye-catching to consumers. The challenge was to make the brand look elegant and expensive. I wanted to target a high income audience.

Moodboard with other scottish wines and designs.

My sketches of ideas for the Low Road wine label.

The Process

I began by making a moodboard with other Scottish wines, tartans, and popular Scottish products. A lot of Scottish products use a red tartan pattern in their branding, so I used my own family clan tartan (which is blue) as my background design. I sketched out some layouts for my label and used a shield shape for the front label and made the logo a black and white ink illustration of the Edinburgh Castle. This gave it a regal look.

The colour palette I used, which consists of dark blue, red, gold, light beige, black, and white.

The font pairing I used, which consists of Bradley DJR - regular, Italiano - regular, and Baskerville - regular

The Guidelines

I wanted to implement a little of my own heritage into this project, so I went with my family clan, MacLaren, as the basis for the tartan background. To accentuate the colours in this tartan, I chose a dark blue and gold to be my main and accent colours. I used Bradley DJR for the wordmark in a dark red to give it the appearance of olden Celtic lettering.

Blue tartan pattern I replicated from my family's MacLaren clan tartan.

The Pattern

I replicated the MacLaren Clan tartan pattern in Illustrator and then put a fabric texture over it in Photoshop to make it look like it was woven.

Layout of the Low Road wine label, which uses the tartan pattern in the background.

Layout of the Low Road shortbread box, which uses the tartan pattern in the background.

The Layouts

I found an image of the Edinburgh Castle and image traced it in Illustrator to give it an inked appearance. I laid out the label in InDesign and printed it to stick onto a wine bottle as a prototype. I did the same process for the shortbread box, but I made the shield shape a die cut to reveal the cookies inside and printed it onto glossy card stock to make sure it's sturdy when assembled into a box.

Moodboard with other scottish shortbread boxes and designs.

My sketches of ideas for the Low Road shortbread box.

Low Road shortbread box with a shield shaped die cut revealing the biscuits inside sitting on tablecloth.

End Result

I feel that I executed this project well and achieved the results I was looking for. I learned that it can be challenging to arrange all of the information required on the packaging along with all the designs and patterns, but it is a challenge that I can handle very well.