The ugly beauty of graphic design

Written By Campbell Mattinson

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 post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. 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; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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