Today seems to be a good moment to tell a little story about Lang & Reed Wine Co., their signature cabernet franc wines and our collaboration on their label designs. John and Tracey Skupny, the owners and winemakers, have always had a unique sense of humor about life and a playfulness when it came to representing their wine on their labels. In the 90’s, when they first approached me to design their label, we started with sort of a Dada-esque depiction of the wine process involving their sons, dogs and the grapes. Over the years, I have designed and often drawn illustrations for their numerous releases: Premier Etage, Wild Hare and The Right Bank, to name a few. One of the latest wine label designs, the “214” label, has a particularly unusual story for its genesis and illustrates the collaborative creative process between owner and designer. (This wine is mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle article.) The design began when John asked me to create a monogram for Lang & Reed. As I often do when I design, I don’t stop at the first, I draw in one sitting, every way I could conceive the letterforms to take. And in this case, every way the L & R could wrap around each other. When I presented him with the dozens of variations, he remarked that the whole of the sketches was an amazing piece. Later on, when I was asked to design the “214” label, it occurred to me to put the hand-drawn sketches in a grid on the label. It became sort of an interactive label. The viewer can pick which of the monograms they preferred. It also visually characterizes the hand-made character of the wine and the quirkiness of the people who brought this wine to your table. It presents to you, without artifice, the raw creative process of design, not often seen as an end product on a label…

http://www.sfchronicle.com/travel/article/Napa-s-other-Cabernet-6852485.php