The ugly beauty of graphic design

None of these designs are my work obviously - I’m not a graphic designer - but because these were my books, I was always a bit too close to them to have a proper view on their cover designs. I never liked the colour choices of the first two, despite it being a ‘Big Red Wine Book’, though I recall really quite liking the orange design on the 2010/2011 edition. Time offers perspective. I’m not sure that any of them have aged well though my views on the first one - with the big R - which was by far my least favourite back then, have changed a bit. I can now see what the designer was going for there. I still don’t like it. But I can see that it was an attempt to break the mould, which I respect. The orange one is highly derivative but it works.

Campbell Mattinson writes for The Winefront.

Campbell Mattinson

This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, founder of The Winefront and mattinson, and former chief editor of Halliday.

When you pick up a wine book and see thousands of top-scoring wines, it’s hard to know which wine to choose. Mattinson guides you through this maze, giving you an honest view of the best Australian wines, the best wine stories, the best wine producers, the best value wines and simply, the best tasting wines. Importantly, Mattinson will tell you about the top-rated wines and also about the underrated wines. In short, Mattinson knows Australian wines inside and out.

Mattinson has been a photo-journalist since 1987. For the past 25 years he’s been a voice that you can trust when you’re looking for the best wines. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award, and is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter. He’s not afraid to put a score beside a wine. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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