Usonia, run by Julia & Alex Alvarez-Perez, makes minimal intervention wines from fruit from their own Cayuga Lake vineyard and likeminded growers. The name comes from Frank Lloyd Wright, who coined the term to refer to his vision of an American landscape unbound by Old World conventions.

In 2022, we were asked to reimagine the brand’s label design system. In collaboration with Drew Litowitz, we developed a spirited yet rigorous approach that allows each wine’s distinct personality to come forward, while preserving a strong visual connection across Usonia’s entire portfolio.

Eclectic type references—and subverts—traditional wine labels. Paired with juicy color blocking and surreal illustration, the bottles stand together in a gradient of color and apart from competitors.

Each year, we work with a single artist to create illustrations for all releases. In 2022, we collaborated with JoMinor.

Our design system accommodates playfulness and improvisation as the brand evolves. For example, our Tocai Friulano design breaks from the solid colors of prior labels, introducing gentle gradients that nod to the charitable purpose behind this release, from which a portion of proceeds benefited LGBTQ+ farmers.

We’ve also brought our eclectic type-handling to stationery for the brand, like these letterpress notecards.

Since establishing this system, we have continued to design and art direct all subsequent releases. To differentiate labels from year to year, we remix each release’s color blocking and collaborate with a different illustrator. In 2023, we worked with artist ThéophileBartz.

As new varieties of wine are added to the Usonia family, we continue to find unique ways to apply this robust system.

In 2023, we also worked with Théophile Bartz to create a memorable t-shirt coinciding with the year’s releases.

2024’s releases included a limited series of wines born out of a devastating spring frost that required Usonia to look outside of their region for fruit for the first time. For these special wines, we created purely typographic labels printed in icy tints of cyan.

For 2024’s standard releases, we partnered with LindaMerad to create a new suite of creatures to populate Usonia’s utopia.

We also developed a new label system for releases from Usonia’s home vineyard, New Suns. (A nod to Octavia Butler: “There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”) New Suns die cut label is formed by duplicating and rotating the Usonia logo to form a subtle sun shape.

In 2025, we designed a final frost release (West! West! West!) and created a new a series of illustrated labels in collaboration with artist ErwanRoussel.