Intelligent design?
Our visual climate is changing. Slowly being eroded,
almost without being noticed. As a trained designer and Master of Wine, it occurs to me that wine still possesses many of the values
that are being lost from our visual world.
Over 20 years, much of the visual richness in our everyday lives has been stripped away. I am not talking about major works of art or architecture here, rather the everyday, almost incidental pieces of visual communication
we all take for granted and often do not even notice, but which form the background, the visual noise to our everyday lives. That shop fascia, the road sign, a vehicle livery, the in-flight magazine. Slowly they are being diminished, no single one thing being of monumental significance, but all adding up to a major loss.
Where we once would have seen the work of the signwriter or typographer we now see digital media often in untrained hands and reproduced on PVC. A recent visit to Ireland reminded me of the quirkiness of hand-painted shop fronts and the way they strongly express their owners' personalities. My own training in design involved the study of typography, rendering lettering by hand and, in doing so, carefully considering just how each letterform would relate to each other in order to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Wine is often still in the hands of artists and craftsmen. Whether the skills and intuition have been passed on over generations, or acquired through study and dedication, the passion is always tangible and often infectious. Even when the production is large scale, the individual still counts. His handwriting can still be seen.
Ultimate tool
The advent of desktop publishing and the Apple Mac
has been both a blessing and a curse. The machine will only be as good as its operator. Our ultimate tool is not the dual core processor, but the pencil. I see many CVs of "designers" who are really Mac operators. Those who can paint and draw and truly express their creativity and original ideas are the true designers.
Let, therefore, the training and continuing education of those involved in the wine industry at every level continue to be as holistic as possible. Let us not train technicians, but people who truly understand and are passionate about wine.
The digital age production of techno-wine - and our endeavours to replicate the human ability to taste by machine - should be viewed with a certain amount of caution. Indeed, many consumers consider wine to be far removed from any "industrial" process and value the idea of something handcrafted, touched by the hand of a human being.
Sadly, in our visual environment we too often see design by committee. Something to please all the people all of the time. In automotive design there appears to be a gradual convergence towards same-ness, possibly as a result of the increasing role of technology in the design process. Perhaps the look has lost contact with humans?
Wine, too could be in danger of losing its richness, having its corners knocked off, aiming to please all those in focus groups all of the time. Wine's ability to currently please as many people as it intrigues and challenges is a result of its diversity. A single wine or brand aimed
at being a crowd-pleaser, while commercially something of a
Holy
Grail, is surely the route to mediocrity.
We are becoming less used to seeing things age gracefully. Our current obsession with newness
is "10 years younger". Some things simply cannot be improved on - they were right the first time, and efforts to re invent have resulted in a sort of corporate watering down which is unwelcome. Certain things become sanctioned by time.
Less is more
The fact that wine is living
and will age (and is therefore ultimately perishable) perhaps sits a little uncomfortably in a highly commercial world, but let it not be forgotten that it is part of what makes wine unique.
Often in our efforts to inform and to educate we
provide "too much information". Our
cluttered roadsides come to mind, where the profusion of warning signs and speed limits distract us from the countryside, and gaudy out-of-town hoardings clamour for our attention. The "less is more" approach could work better.
Subtlety and appropriateness should also be the approach in wine. Whether it be the packaging or the contents, too much information can be as bad as not enough.
Wine still possesses much of the diversity, quirkiness and interest that is disappearing from our visual environment. By gently educating the consumer to see this not as confusion, but as one of wine's great strengths, the future of wine will be secure.
