December 16, 2005
update:
[The Stormhoek “Freshness Indicator”.]
I updated the “If I owned Stormhoek” blog post from 2 days ago, by adding the following:
3. I would change the copy below the freshness indicator to read: “The yellow indicates when to enjoy Stormhoek at its freshest and brightest.” Just so there can be no doubt etc.
Dennis Howlett thinks people already know enough about wine to where the “fresh-o-meter” won’t tell them anything they don’t know already. I disagree with Dennis. Most wine buyer’s knowledge is pretty sketchy, especially at the $10 mark.
[NOTE TO SELF:] Wine porn and wine selling are NOT the same thing.
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Yup. When I order wine, I wave my hand and say “Red”.
Yes, it definitely, definitely needs an explanation of what the yellow/green signify. To be honest, I’d have interpreted that as:
“Drinking it between 2005 – 2008 is ok, but the best time is 2009″
(Because of the connotations of [red], amber, green)
Especially considering that before I read about Stormhoek, I was completely under the impression that older wine is better.
Hey Hugh — I don’t recall saying that?
1. yellow/green is a really bad choice — much better to use green then red, or amber if red is a little too strong. I initially thought the yellow band was “ok” but green was “best“
2. i have NO idea how long wine is supposed to ask. the fresh-o-meter is definately needed for the normal wine drinkers!
Mea Culpa, Dennis. I inferred that was what you meant at the time (and no, I am not going to spend the next 35 minutes digging up the comment so we can argue semantics afterwards)… though fair enough, maybe you meant something else.
Colours could be ‘wrong’ — when I was doing user testing on a project recently we gave them a ‘colour swatch’ style rendition to show how a site would appear in different in different compbinations. One combo was yellow/green tones — least favourite. What about folk who are colour blind?
On the other point — I’m more likely to say 1. the competition is intense so differntiation is crucial in the fight for shelf space 2. most people buy what they like (in the UK) but will be influenced by presentation 3. most wouldn’t consider themselves as wine buffs though they might pretend to be so on occasion –if that means saying -‘Hey I found this great wine — it lives up to its freshness rep’ so what? 4. people can’t possibly have a clue about freshness without trying the wine and then making the association.
But I could have changed my mind from a month or two back — meeting people in the flesh does that for you sometimes. I’ve been doing that a lot recently
If the colors are “wrong”, it’s a problem that’s easy to fix. So I’m not too worried.
Hmmm… maybe a very intense, light green, instead of yellow?
At the $10 mark (
Green is bad because ther are a surprisingly large number of people who are red/green colour blind. To them both appear as a sort of grey. There are other forms. Yellow looks good as it implies sunshine = freshness. Any other colour would be a difficult conrtast I suspect. So how about having a fading yellow as you get to the point where it ain’t ‘fresh’ anymore. Junk the meter as it misleads — at present I’m thinking — ‘oh gotta keep it through 2007 – 8? I wanna drink it now!’
The main thing, regardless of color choices, would be to make the “Ultimate Freshness” label the same color as the “Fresh” portion of the freshness indicator. Right now you are associating “Ultimate Freshness” with 2009 whether you change colors or not.
I’m with Dennis. I think they should ditch the freshness thing altogether.
Not a premium thing to do.
The whole ‘freshness’ idea is cheap’n’cheerful.
It’s tantamount to saying ‘not well made’.
Reminds me of beaujolais. So crap you have do drink it very chilled…and very fast.
Ready wine to go with your ready meal…?
I didn’t think this was the Stormhoek idea.
Wow, The Ultimate Freshness indicator..coool invention..deserve attention.
but the colors seem like something has to do with dish liquids..something smells like lemon..dont know?! I should try it.
Anyhow it’s really Great innovation.
Amber / green signals green being the correct one. I would not even consider reading that thing, amber is about “wait for green”.
The same color in different shades is better in my view because it supports “strong taste / weaker taste” better.
Stormhoek freshness indicator or how to make your sales pitch even better.
At Hugh there is a discussion about the . Visit the logo and give a quick thought about when you think this logo signals “good to drink” and then come back.
I think a freshness factor is a very good idea, especially with cheaper wines. And while …
ok, i think the freshness idea is spectacular, because too many people think (all) wine gets better with age… tim kitchin’s comment that ‘freshness’=not-well-made just reinforces that there is such a stereotype… I think it’s great that stormhoek are trying to break down that image, and that alone speaks ‘hacker’ to me
]
[beaujolais is a pity; the french around here seem to consider it a joke they perpetrate on the rest of the world, yearly
on the colours though: (i received a stormhoek shiraz in the french blogs mailout) my first impression was definitely that the yellow (highlighted, and ‘brightest’) was the target period… but a gradient or different shades of the one colour might be clearer
–p
Brightest?
Does that mean it somehow grows dimmer with time?
Or brighter and *then* dimmer?
I don’t know a thing about how the color/lumens/etc can change over time in a wine… and telling me the “brightness” will change just makes me more confused.
Wine Shop Guy: Ignore the funny cap, this is a steal at $10.
Me: What about the brightness?
WSG: Brightness?
Me: Yeah, when is this wine brightest? How long before it grows dim?
WSG: Ah, yeah. To get the most lumens per hectar vinifactor, you gotta move up a little. South Africa’s pretty bright already, but for an extra twenty I can get you something you can even drink in the dark.
(etc)
Oh, and I think this has been covered but:
Having “ULTIMATE FRESHNESS” in green and the right-end zone in green is sending a *very clear* visual message:
This wine has ULTIMATE FRESHNESS in 2009.
But wait… how can it be fresher in three years than it is now? What?
Also, bad serif font choice.
Hmmm, I do admire the way this design is being played with out in the open and reviewed by your blog readers and all that, but I think it may be time for you to bring a professional graphic designer into the loop. Just a suggestion, but some of the things people are correcting for you would never have been done by a professional in the first place.
(…off to drink some cheap wine now…)
Suggestions:
1) Ditch the whole Freshometer thingy, it’s confusing as hell.
2) Don’t imply there’s a date *after which* the wine is better.
You want me to drink this anytime before now and when it turns to vinegar, right?
Sooner the better, right? Want to sell more wine, right?
3) Remove all references to the wine’s color and intelligence, that’s confusing too.
4) Somehow tie the “freshness” bit to your competitive pitch.
In other words: your “freshness” pitch for wine is *only* not ridiculous as long as you can make the case that it applies to all wine, and Stormhoek is just more honest.
Anyway, those are my suggestions for the moment.
Here’s a mockup:
http://frostopolis.com/flog/pix/2005/12/stormhoek.jpg
DISCLAIMERS: I’m not a real graphic designer and I usually don’t play one on TV; I did this in five minutes on my subnotebook; and I still don’t know what makes a wine bright.
Sorry if I have already said this before or if you’re no longer interested in ideas about the label/packaging of the wine, but this is what I think:
–The name is a pain. It is impossible to remember; it’s weird. Even now after so many months of reading about it, I think I would forget how to spell it in a day or two. And I certainly don’t know how to pronounce it. Your average person quickly looking at labels at the supermarket should be able to remember more than “long foreign name with an H on it”. One way of solving this, maybe, would be a label that played with the first bit of the name, “STORMhoek”. So, a label with some sort of abstract design that reminded of a storm. Silvery and blue diagonal lines or dots?
–Make the freshness indicator sky blue-turning-grey.
–make the bottle slightly thinner and longer than average. Kind of like italian grappa bottles, but of course bigger. I don’t know, it just looks elegant. We like thin things.
I hope the suggestions are useful.
did you see the Japanese whisky (oxymoron, I know) project by Sato-san?
http://www.pingmag.jp/2005/08/22/taku-satoh-graphic-design/
When the words “Ultimate Freshness” are in the same color as the 2009, that immediately indicates (to me) that the peak time is the 2009. If it *is* the other way around, I think this whole info-graphic is absolutely infuriating. Better review it with Edward Tufte