After a few weeks of drawings, we collected everyone’s work and realised that we all have very different styles. “We have an in-house illustrator, but our business director (who claimed not to be creative) and I also drew a bunch.

“We engaged everyone in the studio to draw anything they saw fit,” says creative director Olivia Chen. The team furiously produced a suite of gestural illustrations that became the pièce de résistance of the packaging, and extended the analogue effect to the wordmark by punctuating it with different versions of hand-drawn ‘A’s.īy drawing on the simplicity of charcoal on paper – a nostalgic medium requiring no technical expertise – the studio was able to give the entire team a seat at the table. Learnings about grapes, soil and seasons led the team to the elemental beauty of charcoal – its texture and metaphorical links to Australian soil were compelling, as was its symbolic relationship with Stappa’s steering concept of ‘Grapes, Dirt and Gusto’. When Sydney-based Studio Chenchen began working on the identity for Stappa wine, they knew the project had to celebrate the brand’s love ‘for craft and quality’. The old and the familiar are helping creatives to craft emotionally powerful work, perhaps hint at the disruptive spirit of a project, underscore a deliberate, unpolished look, tug at a feeling of intimacy, or – as in the world of branding – speak to a central truth of a product. Other than just stirring up feelings of nostalgia, or raising a stylistic middle finger to the slick, increasingly digital world, it’s interesting to notice the evocative slant of analogue techniques. We would put it down to a fresh case of recency bias, but our collective hunger for the charm and beauty of the handcrafted has been undeniable – a yearning that’s been echoed in an influx of analogue techniques across disciplines.įrom scribbly, handwritten type in branding, imperfect, spot-the-mistakes-if-you-can animation, to the growing legion of puppets taking over our screens, traditional mediums have been taking centre stage. It’s something we put a finger on early on last year, and ever since, the trend has only swelled in popularity. If one has been looking closely at the subtle undercurrents that perpetually sweep through the creative world, it must have been impossible not to notice the rise of analogue techniques in design.

Aesthetic middle finger drawing