When I was a kid, I collected stamps. I loved all the colors and intricate designs, the foreign languages and learning about the various countries. Through stamp collecting I got a keen sense of world geography. I learned history as well because so many of the beautiful stamps in my collection were from countries that no longer existed. The stamp collection was left behind by the time I moved to Sonoma and got into the wine business, and wine labels replaced my interest in stamps.

Wine labels have a sense of place and time and tradition. In the early days, most labels were austere, rectangular one- or two-color affairs featuring illustrations of chateaus and bold declarations of the names of the wineries. Now, wine labels burst from the shelves with bold colors and torn, warped shapes often peering through the bottle itself. They are festooned with colorful animals, layered with screens and hidden motifs, and they are a printer's history of fonts.

Wine packaging has morphed into the heavyweight territory of custom glass, designer capsules and V-caps, but nothing is as important to a brand's identity as its label. That's because, as consumers, we can't help but link our feelings about what is in the bottle to what is on the bottle. In today's highly competitive world market, the wine label (and the entire bottle package) is more crucial than ever.

We wanted a roundtable discussion that would illuminate how labels are created and how they find their way onto the bottle. Our three panelists have close to 90 years' combined experience working in the heady field of label design.

Dave Osmundson has worked for both large and small printing companies specializing in wine labels since 1983. Working as a salesman for companies like FP Label, Bolling & Finke, Estate Wine Label Co. and Cameo Sonoma, he interfaced with designers, winemakers and marketing teams to produce thousands of wine labels.

Bob Johnson is an illustrator and designer, best known in the wine business for his inspired wine cartoons. He produced his first wine label for Lambert Bridge Winery in 1975. Since then, he's done labels for Seghesio, Trinchero and Smoking Loon, among others. Current projects include the new Arrowood label and Gloria Ferrer's Argentinian brand, Acordeon.

Chuck House burst onto the wine scene with his Frog's Leap label in the late 1970s and has evolved into one of the most sought-after label designers in the world. Venerable wineries, like Antinori in Italy, vie for Chuck's talents with New World stars like Turley and Peter Michael. Over the years, Chuck has designed some of the wine world's most famous labels, including labels for Bonny Doon, Ornellia, Masseto, Araujo, Marcassin and Etude.

How important is a label?

Dave: The label is the first contact you have with the product. It's the most important factor in making that initial sale. So much effort goes into it, just to get that initial attraction to the bottle. As label makers, our job is to get the first sale. After that, it's up to the product. The wine label is supposed to tell a story; or it can just be an attraction due to color or design, something that triggers the consumer to pick up the bottle.

Bob: That point-of-sale moment depends on who's buying the product. Labels like the Kistler label are quiet, like book design. There's a thing about book design that insists it be quiet and not show off. But if it's a $10 bottle of wine, it's got to do something different; so you have to bear in mind who the package is for.

Chuck: It's almost what you don't put on the label that's important. That sense of dynamics, with respect to the label, is an interesting balance that's always being adjusted between the wine and the package; and that includes the bottle and the capsule and the whole thing. It's a sculpture rather than just a cover.

Dave: But the label is the focal point. The label is what you look at first; the rest of that stuff is sort of like the clothes a person wears.

Chuck: I think it's a relationship. I don't know anything about marketing, but you want people not only to buy it once but to come back and buy it again, and share it with their friends and to bond with it in a sense, to see it as an extension of their own personality. For that to really work, the wine needs to have an inherent character and personality of its own.

Dave: You think the label influences how the customer perceives the wine?

Chuck: Yes, and I think it should look just as good when the bottle is empty as it does when they bought it off the shelf. The idea is to create a satisfying trajectory where the anticipation is important and the memory is something that makes them want to go back and repeat the entire experience. All the elements should combine to create an experience that's greater than the sum of its parts; and the label is an important part but only a part.

Bob: I've always said that the winemaker makes the person come back to buy the wine the second time. But it is still important to have a label. There is an association that makes you connect the quality of the wine with the image of the label.

How is a label developed and who's responsible for the ideas?

Bob: It's like a big dance. Someone comes up and wants me to dance with them, and there's a different dance step for each person, even if it's the same song. I find it amazing that no two are alike. I feel like I have to be ready to learn that particular dance.

Chuck: It's because you love to learn, and you want to get something from yourself that comes out of that experience. Every single time you are confronted with a challenge that is exciting and interesting, it's a beginner's frame of reference. As long as you cherish that, you're always going to find a source of energy for your work.

Bob: Ezra Pound said, "The artist is always beginning." If you are doing it right, the label is really new each time.

Dave: In label production you want to make everything happen, but you have to constantly let people know what is impossible, what can't happen. You have to steer them in the direction of production so that people are not disappointed in the end. It's a team effort. The label, that piece of art, has to withstand the rigors of shipping from California to destinations all around the world. It has to be applied by a machine on a bottling line; it has to be attached with glue or pressure-sensitive paper; and it's got to be a practical piece that works, not an art piece that gets destroyed in production.

Bob: I've worked on bottling lines with the intention to learn, and it's amazing what you do learn. I've never had a problem because I'm cautious not to design something that won't work. A label is a sculpture. I tell clients to put their labels on a curve as soon as they can.

Chuck: You not only put it on a curve but you bring it to a situation where you can set it in context. Take it to the store and see how it looks on the shelf. You'll learn from that experience, and that learning is what keeps us active and engaged. It's like the bumper sticker that I love, "Don't believe everything you think." I have to keep reminding myself that there's a lot of surprising information out there. If you are open to that and receptive to that information, then that's as much of the process as having any particular expertise.

How do you create something that is fresh?

Dave: In the printing business it's new technology. Designers push printers to do things that they haven't tried before: to make golds more gold, to make colors more vibrant. It's a challenge to please designers and marketing departments who always want something new. But if you don't do that, your wine bottle and your carefully made wine is going to look like yesterday's package.

Look what's happened to glass in the last decade: There used to be three or four different kinds of glass; now there are dozens of different bottles. I think printing will change even more dramatically in the next decade than it has in the last decade. Printers have to be constantly coming up with new ideas in packaging because designers are always pushing production people to new areas.

Chuck: It's interesting when you mention the new glass. A lot of it is based on antique models. It's not that this has to be something with so much novelty that, as you say, it will become last year's trend. It's more a matter of anchoring to universal themes just as winemakers anchor to the tradition of the vintages. We look to that as our model.

With everything so focused on what's happening next year, next month, next week, there are still those of us aware of the fact that much of our greatest work as a culture lies behind us instead of ahead of us. There is a wealth of material that can be reinvented because the context has changed. I like to think of that as my greatest strength. Also, the fact that I have an overflowing wastebasket. I throw away a lot. If you are looking for something fresh, you need to see something and constantly be able to find what's wrong with it; as opposed to grasping onto it, hoping you can turn it into a success.

Bob: A creative person can always create something new; we can always throw something away. People that aren't experienced with being creative hold onto something really tight. Well, what I do is precious, but at the same time it is disposable. Why? Because I can do it again.

Chuck: The bottle is going to be thrown away too, eventually. You can't get too carried away with your own importance. It's the memory of the experience and the way it relates to the process of sharing wine with friends and colleagues. You can separate out elements, but really it's the way that it all comes together that makes the statement.

Bob: It was amazing when you brought up how social this is. For example, I'm loyal to Tide; I like the orange and the blue, but it's just between me and Tide, it's not social. There is something about wine labels that is social, and we all interact with them.

Dave: But the object today is to sell wine. Whatever the new generation of wine buyers is looking for, that's what the owners want; and it may not be art. It's whatever those people are looking for. Keeping it fresh is one thing, but today's owners are looking for sales.

Do clients tell you that they want to target a specific market?

Dave: They tell that to me quite often.

Chuck: My personal feeling is that if you express the character of the product and you think about taking it into an environment where you enjoy it and share it with friends, then that bridge will be crossed on its own. That's probably why I don't get much work from big companies. I don't think market-directed design is successful. I think they end up being a compromise, like a committee decision.

Dave: Some designers I've worked with ask right up front, "What are you looking for? What group are you going after? How many cases do you want to sell?" Whether they factor that into the design or not, I think they are successful because they tell the client that they can design a label for 100,000 cases or a million cases, and it's going to be different.

How often do clients go in directions you think are wrong?

Chuck: The only way to deal with that is to never go in with something you are not prepared to live with. You may have one idea that appeals to you personally, but that's part of that process of letting go. It's about finding the essence of that project that makes it unique, that allows you to bring out a character and a personality. These bottles do have character and personality, and the degree to which they exhibit that will lead to their success. It may not be immediately visible; it may be something that resonates over time.

Dave: With some of these bigger companies that are selling lower end, value wines, if you were to taste the wines, you would see little difference, but the label plays even a bigger role with the package. When you are making millions of cases of wine, it's hard to make that wine taste unique. The package makes the difference: the identification with those colors, that design.

Chuck: You're right in that we don't design for the client, we design for the client's customers. That's where the success is going to come from. It's not figuring out what the client might want but what's going to be successful with the job he needs to perform. You bring what you can to the experience and try to add your own flavor because they picked you for a reason.

Bob: Designers are like politicians. If you watch a politician on television, they never answer the question they are asked. Never. That said, I give my opinions a lot more than I used to. In the past I tended not to voice my opinion because it was their money and their product. Recently, I presented something by putting my favorite out front. I used to do a slow build. This time I said that's the one I like.

Chuck: It's all kind of intuitive. It's not really a strategy. I realize people want my honest opinion. At this level they are not looking for someone who just wants to please them. Great managers will listen to opposing points of view. They may not adopt them, but they want them expressed.

Wine has become a part of the popular culture. When I started working, it was a very rarefied, elite, exclusive club. Now, wine is for everybody. It's been democratized and is open to a huge influx of energy on that basis.

Once you finish a label, how long do you stay attached to it?

Bob: When you do something for print, it's printed forever. It's always there. There's something very profound about that whole process. There's a quote about poetry that goes, "You never finish a poem, you abandon it." Deadline is the best thing for an artist because you have to say this is the best I can do as of June 12th. You've got to do it and move on. I'm attached to everything I've done. I think any writer or creative person is.

Chuck: If you care about the process and you're doing your job correctly, you have imbued that project with a part of who you are. You have to bring something of yourself to the project, and other people will know that somebody cared about it. You can sense that there is a genuine commitment. To retain that commitment is part of our pact with the people who hire us to do this.

How important are printers to your process?

Bob: I always tell my clients that the best meeting we are going to have is with you, me and the printer we choose. I love a printer who is passionate about what he does. I respect printers because they get the final headache. Inside every designer is a printer. You're only as good a designer as you are a printer.

Chuck: Printers will come up with solutions that you never would have envisioned.

Dave: Better designers will consult with the printer and create their design based on reality, not taking different substrates and saying, "It's yours, baby."

We always love to upgrade, but the pressure now is to just make it cheaper.

Chuck: That's where the competitive printing industry is a problem. We go through this process with a client and a printer who really cared. They put in a lot of time getting the color matches and the dies right, and spending time on the press check. Then once it's on the market these other printers come in and make low, competitive bids, which will always undercut the original printer.

Dave: Not just a low bid, but they'll say if you just make these few compromises we can sell it to you for half the price.

Chuck: And it's hard for the purchasing department to ignore those figures. All I know about printing is that it is extremely difficult and you shouldn't tell them how to do their job. I respect them enormously.

Where is label design headed?

Dave: I see different substrates, such as paper or plastic or glass. You may have one layer of coated paper and another of uncoated paper on the same bottle. It adds dimension, but I think the classic designs are always going to be important.

Bob: Dave's right. There are already things you can paint on bottles. Ten years ago you could only do 10 bottles, now you can do 50,000. That's going to be exciting. I'm looking forward to not being restricted by this geometric. On a bottle you can go anywhere you want.

There is a trend now that I think is going to grow, and that is narratives that tell a story. Not just the name, varietal and vintage, but more entertainment. It's happening now. Back label copy that says "to be continued on the Zinfandel."

Chuck: I think you are right, but I don't necessarily think it's a gimmick. It feeds into that idea that it's part of your life and not a lifestyle.

How much of what you do, do you view as art?

Dave: Wine labels are really the most creative form of printing and art out there. Except for duplicating large lithographs, I can't think of anything that is more beautiful or more talked about than a wine label.

Bob: I am an artist. I distinguish myself from other designers because I am an artist. For me, I always bring art. When I give a bid, it's on the capsule, the cork, the shipper, the face, the whole thing. It's a piece of art.

Chuck: I don't have that same perspective because I'm not an artist. I think of it as more of a literate quality. Typography is more what I watch. It's sort of like a spoken voice. It's like if this was a book on tape-who would you hire to read it? Because your fonts are more or less a tone of voice that sets a mood: you get it immediately.

Bob: It is type. We have to be type specialists. I point out to my clients that these fonts are actually characters. That's what we call them, and they do have a character. When I look at your Kistler label, that font is ever, ever so powerful. To me that makes it art.

Chuck: We both share a literary passion in the sense that every letter form is a work of art. The balance of the script font as opposed to the classic Roman fonts and the way that these evolved throughout our own heritage, along with the evolution of wine itself, is a big part of the untold story. It's obvious that you are in the hands of somebody who knows what they are doing.

That's the key to this whole matter of balance between the art, the type, the paper, the bottle and the whole thing. Somebody thought about this. Somebody planned it for your enjoyment. Just relax and have a good time.

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Artists have a unique vision of the world. They see links where the rest of us don't. They create something where before there was nothing. Each creation is brand new but is somehow related to and has grown from what has come before. I don't know if wine labels qualify as art, but after this roundtable, I'm pretty sure that label designers speak like artists.

The wine label is the nexus where art and commerce meet. Business people often have a hard time understanding the language of artists; dollars and cents and the bottom line tend to be specific. Good art tends to flow and change and develop over time, a lot like wine. Clearly, the art of the wine label is connected to and energized by the wine inside the bottle. Perhaps the most dynamic and effective packages would be developed if winemakers and designers got together with sketchbook in hand over a few bottles and a simple meal. wbm