Featured image for Crit* Possession - The Unholy Wine Collection

Crit* Possession - The Unholy Wine Collection

by First name Last name on 02/14/2012 | 4 Minute Read

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Possession: The Unholy Wine Collection was last week's #1 post on our site. Richard shares his critique below- what are your thoughts?

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"Possession is a conceptual red wine collection that includes ‘Evil Demon – Bloody Shiraz’, ‘Haunting Ghost – Spooky Cabernet’ and ‘Old Witch – Cursed Pinot Noir’. Designed by Norwegian freelance designer and photographer Daniel Brokstad each piece features a custom screen-printed typographical treatment and symbolic detailing, packed in a coffin case.

'All the wines comes in a solid coffin-shaped glossy casing, which adds to the exclusiveness of the wine series. Each are based on different occult themes as Satanism, the paranormal, and witchcraft. The type design on each bottle reflects its theme and was made in a rough way to contrast the otherwise clean setup and design, to give it more of an edgy look. This is a self initialized conceptual design.'

- Taken from Daniel Brokstad website.

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"The typography has been well constructed with a sweeping and ghost-like character, that displays a confident brush and watercolour technique. The script aesthetic neatly ties each variety together appearing spontaneous, energetic, dramatic, and appropriately ‘evil’ throughout. The detail and fluid motion is complemented and enhanced with a simple colour palette and minimal layout, distilling the theme and representing the absolute abstraction of good and evil through the intelligent and restrained interplay of light and shadow.

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"The symbols confidently mirror the stroke style of the typography, but are slightly ambiguous in their selection with each having positive religious connotations, rather than the intended ‘unholy’. This is most notable in the utilization of the pentagram, (typically a symbol of good) rather than a pentacle (a reversed pentagram commonly associated with Satanism). It is hard to decide whether this is due to a research oversight, or a clever observation and representation of the fine line between good and evil, or a comment on the misappropriation of religious symbols by cinema and television. The triquetra and inverted cross also suffer from similar misappropriations, and may have -perhaps- been more appropriately delivered as the designer’s personal interpretation of ‘unholy’, and relied less on the contrivances of popular culture. The coffin case, a typically religious object, might well be a smart juxtaposition of the theme but unfortunately feels a little trite in its straightforward and conventional realization."

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"The aesthetic result is nicely crafted but unfortunately built on a slightly contrived concept. It functions well as a typographic self-promotional piece, but less representative of the designer’s broader understanding of the often complex commercial considerations required within this category."

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Opinion by Richard Baird

Follow Richard on Twitter: @richbaird