“Design” is a discipline too many people consider the sole provenance of excessively gaunt types with severe architectural glasses and a proclivity for words like “neo-dadaist.”  Which is really too bad because trolling design-oriented websites can be a wonderfully energizing experience.  Graphic design, product design, landscape design–there are many variations of this discipline to enjoy, each redolent with examples of innovative, exuberant or just plain smart thinking.

Which brings me to this blog post on thedieline.com: a terrific website that celebrates packaging.  This item showcases a beautifully-simple innovation for wine labels: a tear-off section containing the wine name and vintage designed specifically “To Remember.”

Finally.  A simple solution to something I imagine is a pretty common problem.  I mean, I don’t pretend to know good wines.  But every now and then, I try something and really like it.  Unfortunately, most of my mental hard drive is clogged with performance-sapping inanities like plot synopses for Our Gang episodes and the complete lyrics to Paperlace’s “The Night Chicago Died” so I can rarely remember any specifics about the wine the next day (come to think of it, the wine itself might also be at least partly to blame for that).

Either way, some clever people at Collotype Labels developed this Wine Find™ Removable Reminder and niftily solved my problem.  Or at least, they would have if I drank Oxford Landing Shiraz from South Australia.  But the point remains: these designers recognized the problem–or as modern brand managers prefer to say, ‘the opportunity’–and simply did something about it.

Funny how the first step to doing something good is simply to do something.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79