Wine Bottle Project

Created an adult beverage product design based upon the characteristics of another classmate. Bottle was curated to person’s personality and gifted upon completion.

For our first senior project at UIUC, we were to design an adult beverage bottle based on the interests, characteristics, and personality of another classmate. This design was based on those traits of my friend Pascale, whom I have known since the beginning of my college career. Pascale has studied both Graphic Design and Painting, and is a lover and appreciator of fine artwork.

After a conversation with her, I learned she greatly values handmade things. She has an appreciation for gifts and art that take time and thought and values the sentimentality of these things. While born and raised in the United States, Pascale also has a great love and pride for her family’s native country of Chile. I decided to design a red wine, as it is Pascale’s favorite type of drink, which she enjoys with her family over dinner. Red wine is a popular drink in Chile, and Chile is a large exporter of fine red wines.

I decided to hand-paint the label for this wine in oil paint, a medium Pascale uses often. It was my first oil painting ever, and I decided to use this medium both because of her familiarity with it, and because of our agreed love for the texture and look of these paintings. The bottle, in a way, serves as a small art gallery for this original painting, and showcases this artwork - important to her values. It also serves as a decoration and helps create a formal mood at the table, where Pascale would typically consume wine alongside her family. The drink’s name, “Casablanca”, is named after the region in Chile where much of the country’s wine is made and exported from. A star is featured in the center of the label, which was adopted from Chile’s flag. The name and the star, on the surface level, add to the high-class drink I intended to make, matching the artistic, classy, patriotic, and nostalgic persona of Pascale.