Wine Enthusiast Winston: design before and after

5 November 2008 | By Popsop Team

Time for a palate cleanser after all that soda talk: Founded in 1979, Wine Enthusiast Companies has been providing all things wine — from products like glassware, refrigerators and wine racks, to tasting events, and to a magazine for, um, wine enthusiasts — to the ever growing market of wine consumers, from experts to novices and everything in between.

Wine Enthusiast Co. realizes the need to expand into a broader market and that its identity should reflect the eclectic wine audience. Working with New York-based CBX, they created a whole new identity for their broad range of offerings.

The biggest change comes in the form of the age-defying Winston, the face of Wine Ethusiast. Originally born as Lord Winston in 1979, wearing an ascot and with his pinky finger properly raised he smells his glass of wine. Well, no more Mister Lord. Now, just Winston, he wears a sweater and a button-down shirt and smiles as he raises his glass in a toast.

More friendly and approachable for sure and looks like the kind of cool, old guy that you would want to hang out with. No offense to cool old guys. I like the new personality of Winston, but I like the old execution much better with the more consistent line thickness, as opposed to the new one that has a lot of thicks and thins.

Ironically, the new Winston style goes better with the old typography and the old Winston style goes better with the new condensed sans serif.

The rest of the materials carry on with the same update of taking it from stuffy and serious to friendly and accessible. The result is a nice update that should take away the intimidation factor for newcomers but it’s still elegant and confident enough that the more experienced oenophile will not think less of the brand.

And here’s a nice treat, courtesy of CBXer David Weinberger who worked on this project. A 7-foot poster that served as a visual audit at the beginning of the project to explore what wine is and what it could be.