Martí Guixé designs the labels for Marinferno’s table wine: a graphic project that chooses honesty over narrative There is a quiet question that every wine label carries with it: should it look barely designed in order to convey authenticity, or does caring about the label signal that someone also cares about the wine? Martí Guixé knows it well, and for Villano and Bastard, the table, natural and artisanal wines of Marinferno in Vicobarone, in the province of Piacenza, he chose a third path: no premiumisation, no performed spontaneity, but a direct and slightly irreverent graphic language, consistent with what the wine actually is. A wine for friends and family, free of the conventions of commercial wine. A good wine, but an everyday one, produced in Val Tidone, in the hills of Piacenza, where landscape, creativity and hospitality are at the heart of the artistic and organic farming project born in 2016. Marinferno wine labels by Martí Guixé, Photo credit: Inga Knoelke The project The names were already in place: Villano and Bastard. Guixé’s task was to develop a visual identity that reflected their spirit, deliberately avoiding the familiar codes of contemporary wine branding: romantic illustrations, script typefaces, vintage or heraldic elements, everything that belongs to what the designer calls the “Milton Glaser paradigm”, born with the Brooklyn Brewery design. That logic by which a label must look barely designed to seem authentic. Here, the graphic design does not hide itself: it uses itself to say something true. The two labels are circular and work as a pair within an equivalent graphic system. Black background with white graphics for the red, white background with black graphics for the white: distinct on the black bottle, unified by the same language. The typeface, Denver, was developed by Guixé in 2003 and, for these labels, was drawn by hand on a Wacom tablet and converted into vectors. The handwritten quality conveys spontaneity and an absence of pretension, without giving up the precision of the design gesture. The printing is digital. There is no back label: for a wine born to circulate among trusted people, certain conventions simply do not apply. Martí Guixé speaking “I relate it to what I call the ‘Milton Glaser paradigm’: should a label look barely designed in order to convey authenticity? Some people believe a simple or careless label indicates the wine is so good it needs no design; others think that whoever takes care of the label will also take care of the wine. Both perceptions are valid. In this case, rather than premiumising the product, the graphic aims to convey honesty and irreverence: the wine is what it is, nothing more,” stated Martí Guixé, who defines himself as an ex-designer. Marinferno has collaborated with artists and designers on its labels, but Villano and Bastard do not fit into that logic of distributed authorship; they respond to a different brief: to design the house wine. And the house wine does not need to tell a story. You just open it. Villano. Red Wine Bastard. White Wine Marinferno, Vicobarone (PC), 2026 Graphic design: Martí Guixé Photo: Inga Knölke
