Style combination · Contrasts
European Heraldry × Natural Wine Label Art
The crest is the device of the classic château label that natural wine replaced with a face or an animal; put one heraldic charge beside a doodle to show which side of the wine world a bottle stands on.
Mix them and make something European Heraldry Natural Wine Label Art
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
European Heraldry Natural Wine Label Art
- Type from Natural Wine Label Art
- Colour from European Heraldry
- Form from European Heraldry
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Natural Wine Label Art avoids emblems & badges: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Natural Wine Label Art
- Surface from Natural Wine Label Art
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02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Natural Wine Label Art
Atlas
Caveat, standing in for Hand-scrawled cuvée names in felt pen, crayon or pencil, written by the same hand as the picture (the 'grocery store list doodles' AIGA Eye on Design describes)
Text · European Heraldry
The hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families. A coat of arms is defined by its written blazon, not by a drawing: a few flat tinctures (two metals, five colours and the furs) that keep metal off metal and colour off colour, a shield divided by bold ordinaries, and stylised charges in fixed poses, redrawn by every age in its own idiom and combined by impalement and quartering.
Libre Caslon Text; European Heraldry used Gothic book and cursive hands naming the bearer above or beside each shield in medieval rolls of arms and armorials, as 'die coninc van denmarke' beside the Danish flag in the Gelre Armorial and Mottoes lettered on a scroll beneath the shield
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from European Heraldry, with a counter-accent from Natural Wine Label Art. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
European Heraldry Natural Wine Label Art
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#f4f1e8ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#e8b923accent · 18% -
#f08a3caccent · 14% -
#b5121baccent · 10% -
#3f6db3accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f1e8;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #e8b923;
--accent-2: #f08a3c;
--accent-3: #b5121b;
--accent-4: #3f6db3;
--font-display: "Caveat", cursive;
--font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}Use it with care
European Heraldry: A coat of arms belongs to a particular bearer, lineage or (in Polish heraldry) clan, not to everyone with a surname: in Scotland it can belong to only one person at a time and the Court of the Lord Lyon can fine those who usurp arms and have the offending items removed or destroyed, state arms are protected against unauthorised registration and use as trademarks under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention, and many European cities and universities protect their arms as trademarks. Design new arms by the rules of the tradition rather than copying a real family's, city's or state's arms for decoration or branding, and do not present invented arms as a family's historic coat of arms. Crusader and Templar shields and knights with crosses on their chests or shields have also become far-right insignia (Charlottesville 2017, the US Capitol 2021), and neo-Nazis use an eagle loosely based on German coats of arms, though not every eagle derives from it; check how a cross, an eagle or a crusading knight will read before using it, and avoid pairing them with militant or ethnic-nationalist themes.
Natural Wine Label Art: Gut Oggau's family of faces, Jaime Hayón's drawings for it, Jauma's Tikka the Cosmic Cat and Michel Tolmer's characters are owned artwork: invent your own character, do not prompt an image model for a named illustrator's hand, and never present a generated image as a real grower's label. 'Natural' has no legal definition for wine, and French rules even forbid tying the words 'nature' or 'naturel' directly to 'vin'; the Vin Méthode Nature logo is a private mark for growers who sign its charter (validated by the DGCCRF in March 2020), so do not put it on a design for a wine that is not certified. Keeping the legal mentions quiet must not mean leaving out the label's mandatory particulars.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With European Heraldry
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · The craft badge borrows heraldry's air of lineage with an 'Est.' date and crossed arrows on kraft paper, while a real coat of arms is a granted or inherited, blazoned identity in strong tinctures; set the two side by side to show the difference between quoting heritage and holding it.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · A coat of arms already is an identity defined by a specification rather than one drawing, applied to seals, banners, buildings and documents; Finnish municipal arms of the 1950s show how its flat two-tincture discipline reads as a modern mark, so use blazon-like rules to write a logo that can be redrawn without losing itself.
- Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition Pairs well · Medieval armorials name their shields in Gothic hands and German heraldic artists such as Otto Hupp also drew Fraktur; pair a flat Gothic shield with a blackletter name or motto for a certificate, diploma or civic document, checking how the broken script will read politically.
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Contrasts · Both are hereditary emblem systems that began in the twelfth century and mark kinship by small codified variations, but a mon is a single-colour silhouette drawn round a centre while a coat of arms is a shield of contrasting tinctures read by the rule of tincture; compare them to choose between a one-ink crest and a coloured, partitioned one.
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo) Contrasts · Both raise colours and emblems over a fighting company, but heraldry codifies one bearer's arms by rule, while a curva borrows the city's arms, a skull or a film villain for one afternoon and paints it the size of a stand; choose between a fixed blazon and a crowd-made, temporary emblem.
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards Pairs well · The Emperor's and Empress's eagle shields and the maker's escutcheon on the 2 of Coupes come from armory; pair heraldic tinctures and charges with a tarot figure for a crest-like card or label.
- Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) Contrasts · Alciato's book opens with the arms of the Duchy of Milan, but a coat of arms identifies a bearer by the rules of blazon, while an emblem is a freely invented moral riddle that needs its motto and verse; use arms to identify and an emblem to argue.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Contrasts · Both mark a sovereign's identity and authority, but heraldry does it with charges and tinctures on a shield and the tughra with the ruler's name alone; compare them to decide whether an identity should be pictured or written.
With Natural Wine Label Art
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Alice Feiring calls the earlier natural-wine scene punk rock: of Gut Oggau she says 'This is where things grow up and stop being so punk rock' (Punch, 2021). Take punk's refusal of professional polish but drop the collage and the anger: one felt-pen picture on a white label carries the same do-it-yourself stance in a friendlier voice.
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Contrasts · Blanding sells a frictionless, agency-made brand in lowercase geometric sans and pastels; the natural wine label sells a person through an untrained drawing. Use the contrast to decide whether a product should feel designed or made.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Both come from the same small-batch maker economy and share a naive drawn idiom; print a short-run cuvée label in two riso inks to add overprint and grain to a felt-pen drawing.
- French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Pairs well · Both put one cartoon figure on a plain ground with the name drawn into the picture; the gag poster is a professional's single punchline at hoarding scale, the wine label an amateur's picture at bottle scale. Borrow Savignac's one-image-one-idea discipline to keep a naive label from turning into a scrapbook.
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · The craft boom's centred one-ink badge with an 'Est.' date borrows exactly the heritage authority natural wine turns down; set a crayon animal against a stamped roundel to choose between a new firm dressed as an old one and a grower who signs with a drawing.
- Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design) Pairs well · Super Glou's drunken-cat mascot and Jauma's cosmic cat work like local mascots; borrow the yuru-chara habit of one soft, recurring character who appears in a new scene for each product.