Augustiniánský Sklep is one of Moravia's most storied wineries, with roots tracing back to 1742. Located in the heart of the Czech Republic's premier wine-growing region, the winery produces a portfolio of rosé, red, and white varietals — each shaped by decades of craft and the distinctive terroir of Moravian viticulture. Their wines carry genuine depth of heritage, and the brand behind them needed to reflect that.

Houbi Studio was brought in for a comprehensive packaging and campaign project: a full redesign of the label suite across the winery's range, plus an extension of that visual language into a complete campaign system covering in-store point-of-sale materials, outdoor billboards, and digital advertising assets. The scope demanded both precision in print and impact at scale.

The Challenge

The Central European wine market is crowded, competitive, and increasingly international. To stand out on a retail shelf, at a wine fair, or in a digital ad, a label needs to work on multiple levels at once: it must communicate tradition without looking tired, premium quality without feeling inaccessible, and regional identity without limiting its appeal to a local market.

The winery's existing labels had charm, but they lacked the design cohesion and premium execution needed to compete confidently in modern retail environments. Labels across the range did not speak with a consistent visual voice, and the print quality ambitions — including specialised finishing techniques such as foil application — had not been fully realised in previous versions.

Beyond the labels, the challenge of the campaign system added another layer of complexity. An image that works beautifully at the scale of a 75cl bottle needs to translate to a billboard on a motorway and a thumb-sized square on Instagram. The design had to be built for range from the outset.

Our Approach

The creative direction leaned into an editorial aesthetic — the kind of richness and mood you find in premium lifestyle publishing, rather than the flat-colour minimalism that has become generic in the wine category. We wanted the labels to feel like they had been designed by someone who genuinely loved wine, not just packaging.

Custom illustrations were developed for each wine in the range, giving every varietal a distinct visual character while maintaining consistency across the full lineup. These illustrations were designed with foil application in mind from the start — the golden foil treatment was not added as a finish, but built into the composition as a focal element, so the tactile quality of the final label feels intentional and complete.

Each wine received its own colour world: deep, saturated crimson for the Cabernet Sauvignon; a delicate, dusty blush for the Rulandské Modré Rosé; and a cool, herbaceous sage-green for the Sauvignon Blanc. These choices are both sensory and strategic — the colour at a glance tells the buyer what to expect from the glass.

Key creative decisions included custom illustration per varietal balancing heritage reference with contemporary composition; golden foil application designed into the artwork — not applied over it — ensuring production precision; a cohesive colour language across the range where each wine is distinct but the family unified; high-end product photography styled with fresh fruit, flowers, and dramatic liquid splash effects for campaign use; and campaign assets adapted for POS retail displays, outdoor billboard formats, and digital placements.

Results

The client was delighted with the outcome across the board. The redesigned labels launched across the full wine range, with the foil treatment drawing consistent positive attention both from buyers and from the retail partners stocking the wine. The campaign visuals activated simultaneously across all three planned channels — in retail environments, on outdoor billboards, and in digital placements — giving the winery a brand presence that felt genuinely unified for the first time.

3 channels activated simultaneously: retail, outdoor, and digital — all with cohesive brand identity on launch.

Beyond the visible outputs, the project gave Augustiniánský Sklep something more durable: a design language they own. The visual system we built is scalable — new vintages, new varietals, and new markets can be added to the range without losing the coherence of the whole.

For food and beverage brands considering a packaging redesign, this project illustrates the value of treating print production as a design opportunity rather than a technical constraint. The golden foil is not decoration — it is communication. It tells the buyer, before they have read a single word, that this bottle is worth their attention.