Welcome back! Today is the third and final installment of our Jordan Jelev interview. From classic calligraphy to modern typographic masterpieces, Jordan has found a real niche for beautiful labels in the wine industry.

Dave Hile: You have an impressive range of styles, from an ornamental calligraphic style to a sleek modern typographic approach. How did you develop your strong type design skills?

Jordan Jelev: I am both a typography addict and a professional calligrapher, which sets me free in type design. My work might be improved by using some digital fonts, but in many situations you have to switch to custom lettering unless you don’t want to have just “another ordinary design.” Custom lettering is my specialty—it is one of those things that makes my designs more distinguished and recognizable. It is somehow like a personal signature that brings more and more identity to the final product. We are in the 21st century now—everything in our life is so plastic, synthetic and automatic. I think it is good for a digital artist to have experience as a craftsman. I’ll give you an example from March of this year. I was designing the new labels of the Royal Selection wine range (domaineboyar.com). I started looking for some interesting font set to write the word Royal in a more artistic manner—it took me nearly three days and I was still unsatisfied with the result. I used my quills and it took me one more day to do the custom lettering for the same word—the result was amazing.

The background of my custom lettering history starts in my near past. I got a present from my father and my wife—a set of automatic pens and an old bottle filled with ink. Up to that day I had so many digital fonts in my head, and when I grabbed the pens I thought I could write every one of them.

DH: Aside from the typography, you show a lot of innovation in the textures and shapes of your labels—in the planning process, do you tend to envision all these elements as one entity, or do you tend to focus on one element separately and then build the others around it?

JJ: The shape and the texture are design elements, too. They significantly improve the communication between the product and consumers. Imagine that you are 3-4 meters away from the bottle of wine in the store; what you see first is the bottle shape, the label shape, and probably some basic colors—that’s what our eyes produce as an image to our brain. The closer you get to the bottle, the more things you start to see better and better till the moment you have it in your hands, where you can touch it, feel it, maybe even smell it—and finally remember it (and buy it, of course).

All those textures, shapes, varnishes, embossing, etc. are important parts of my design—some projects need to use all of them at once, others don’t need them. It just depends on what both the designer and the market experts say and want from the final product.

DH: You’ve done a lot of work for Bulgarian companies. Are you looking to expand into new markets in other countries?

JJ: Bulgaria will always be an interesting place not only for wine label design, but for the whole wine industry, so I’m really happy to work for our native wineries. I am also focused on approaching some foreign clients from the U.S., South America, Australia and South Africa.

Maybe I should use your “Reverse Method” to approach them—start with a bottle of wine and then send an email! DH: Thanks for all the great insight into your work, your process, and your background, Jordan. It’s been fascinating to learn about design in Bulgaria, and we hope to see your labels gracing the shelves of American wine shops soon!

Visit Jordan Jelev or Factor R Studio to see more about Jordan.

Today we have part two of our three-part interview featuring Jordan Jelev, the vastly talented Bulgarian label designer. Also known as “The Labelmaker,” Jordan gives us an in-depth view of his career and his process, as well as some excellent examples of his work. Make sure to visit soon for the third and final installment.

Dave Hile: What does your creative process entail? Do you taste the wine before designing the label? Do you research the vineyard’s other offerings? For example, on the Bulgarian wine +359 design (which is based on the country’s international phone code), you utilized the type font from the Bulgarian Post in the 1960s. Do you always think so carefully about historical or social aspects of the design?

Jordan Jelev: I did not expect it would turn into a normal practice, but the answer is yes—I always taste the wine before starting my work. It is a significant part of the process. When you design the outer part, you have to know what is inside the bottle in order to make a connection between them and to portray it correctly to the buyer of the product. So when you know what’s inside the bottle, it’s really easy to design a label for it. This makes the whole thing 100% authentic because all the elements of the final product are related to one another. I don’t go crazy finding and creating such relationships between history, wine itself, design, or even aspects of consumer psychology, but I do think that if there is a significant story related to the product, we should bring it forward and show it to people.

DH: Do you have a few favorite labels you’ve designed that you’d like to share with us? Why are these your favorites?

JJ: Sure, though I might say I like all of them.

I am in such a creative period in my development that I am beginning to understand the sense of being different in the wine industry.

I started to think differently when I was creating a label following my new formula—which is, that there has to be something remarkable about the label so people can remember it.

There are several examples of my new period—Rousse Rose is one of them. I decided to make a label based entirely on custom modern typography. So I designed letters consisting of small dots overprinted with puff up varnish. The result was amazing—the letter looked like it was made of small led lights. I believe this label is a good example of modern thinking, considering the fact that I am addicted to vintage typography and calligraphy. So this label was kind of unusual for me. Another good example of my more modern design is my latest work for Sarva, and the Project Wines by Dragomir Winery. I had a wonderful time working for those people, and the result was surprising even to me. The whole design is based on the welding and intersecting of three elements, because the wines were a blend of three grape varieties.

We used ultra-gloss, silver-coated, self-adhesive foil to print the labels on and when used in combination with my favorite puff-up varnish, the result was a great success.

Now to the old classics—A few years ago, I began wanting to design a label that says everything about my skills, technical experience, calligraphy—everything about me as a professional creative. That turned out to be my Shiraz Label created for PVN brand.

The label is 100% hand-crafted, against all the supermoderndigitalhyperturbo 21^st-century technology. I drew it on a sheet of A4-size paper. I photographed it then transferred it to polymer plates and printed it in my kitchen in the cold winter of 2007 at 3 a.m. in the morning.

That label was great fun for me—I still recall it time and again.

Stay tuned for part 3…

Today we post the first of a three-part interview with Bulgarian wine label designer Jordan Jelev, otherwise known as “The Labelmaker.” In the interview, Jordan gives us such a fascinating look at his career and the way he thinks that we wanted to share every word with you. Be sure to come back for the second and third installments, which we’ll post within the next week.

Dave Hile: Jordan, thanks for agreeing to talk with us. First of all, could you provide a little background for us? You didn’t go to school for design, so how did you end up designing professionally?

Jordan Jelev: My design career is a mixture of my daily life events, personality and some strange coincidences. I graduated from the High School of Mathematics in Bulgaria, then I got my economics degree and finally became a graphic designer and calligrapher. It’s a long story!

There is a connection between all these things, though, from my youth up until now. I’ve always had an addiction to stuff like typography, graphic design, packaging, architecture and so on. These addictions allowed me to eventually focus every bit of my individuality, creativity and energy to becoming a visual artist.

DH: And with very successful results! I know you design labels and packages for other industries, but I want to discuss your wonderful wine labels. Did you intentionally set out to design wine labels or did it just begin as an assignment? Was it something that you immediately felt you had a knack for or did you grow into it gradually?

JJ: My wine label experience first started as an assignment, but then it turned into a passion, and then a lifestyle, I might say. In the 1990s I was commissioned to create names for two new wine brands and then to use those new brand names to create two different wine ranges: the Regalis Wines and the Nobilitas wines. This began a whole new stage in my life—both as an individual and as a professional. The truth is that I had some really confusing thoughts at the very beginning about creating a wine label design, but it actually took me a very short time to get inside the problems and specifics of this type of design. Then came the passion—and now I am here.

HD: Let’s talk a little about how you work—do you work independently, taking on freelance assignments, or are you part of a bigger firm?

JJ: To answer the question fairly, I must say that I do both, but it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. I have worked for nearly 13 years for Factor R Studio, but my status there is far more than just being a designer hired by a company. I don’t think it makes any difference for the client whether someone approaches me via Factor R or epixs.eu (the official site of Jordan Jelev, the Labelmaker)—they will eventually find me.

DH: Now that you have such a solid reputation for your design niche, do you depend on word of mouth to market yourself or do you advertise your services?

JJ: I have never used any kind of ad to promote my business. Maybe here is the place to mention that for the past two years I have spent a lot of time on the Internet in different design forums, Facebook, and many other places like those. The result is amazing—I have connected with many, many new and interesting people (like you, Dave, for example), and now I feel more like an international designer rather than just a Bulgarian designer. I think the Internet offers a very positive change—it sets a view to brand-new horizons and opportunities worldwide.

DH: Back to the wine labels—I’m just curious: Have you ever tasted a bottle of wine and enjoyed it so much that you contacted the vineyard in hopes of working together?

JJ: (Laughs) No, never did that before. Maybe I should try it—it’s like reversing the process!

To be continued …