Story. Everything you see, everything you touch, everything around you, has a story. But which one is worth telling? Well, it depends on which gives you an emotional feeling when you interact with it. It’s the same with brands, they use storytelling to engage with their audiences because good story itself can evoke the emotional state of our mind instead of our intellectual. As a starting point, I’ll show you a great example of storytelling by a premium Macedonian wine company, Domaine Lepovo.
The earth is a creation of perfect harmony,
On one side, we have the sun, which feed us light and energy to grow,
On the other, we have the moon, which helps balance the composition in the absence of the sun.
We have fertile soil that nurtures the vine,
There’s the water that feeds that soil…
… and the whisper of the wind to remind us that nature is all around us.
There’s a special place on earth with just the right amount of all these ingredients.
A place where the sun shines brightest those day when you need it most.
A place where the richness of the soil gives our wine the look and taste of passion.
A place where centuries of wine-making tradition come together…
… with a natural richness that’s unseen anywhere else.
The place is …
Yes, the place is, indeed, Domaine Lepovo. Plus, there’s much more behind the story. Domaine Lepovo is a wine company who selects only a specific location from an already perfect condition vineyard to produce their high quality wine. Perfection itself isn’t quite good enough for them, perhaps? The word ‘Domaine’ also refers to their wine-making culture, where all the wines have to be produced at the same location as where the grapes are grown.
So how do they sum up (visually, of course) this magical land of winery perfection?
Well, they found just the right person for the job, Petar Pavlov, a Macedonian strategic designer. What Petar does is create a symbol to represent all the natural elements that are responsible in making the perfect wine. A symbol that only involves basic natural shapes – a circle and curve. It’s quite clear actually, the circle represents the solid elements (the sun, the earth, and the moon), and the curve represents the fluid and flowing elements (water, soil, and wind).
Perfect ingredients, a perfect location, perfect story, and a perfect symbol. What’s next?
Since Domaine Lepovo is already perfect in every possible ways, Petar suggests that there’s only one direction for this brand – premium luxury. So he uses silver, gray, and black (which is the colors most luxury brands would use) as the corporate colors for the branding. Expressing the packaging design in a minimalist way also helps revealing the deluxe elegance of the product.
As for the last piece of the puzzle, they signed off each and every single bottle of wine with a unique brushed stroke (by hand) as a commitment to quality and exclusivity. “The brush stroke tells the story of how much dedication went into creating this wine and acts as a unique signature for each bottle.”
What can you get from this?
Story is like a portal between two different worlds. It’s the words you use to tell who you are to connect and build relationship with your audiences. A good story enables you to set a background image for you or your brand that can be hardwired to other people’s mind.
Notice that Domaine Lepovo uses words like ‘nurture’, ‘feeds’, and ‘whisper’ in their story? It makes the story more vivid and, most importantly, more human. Because of the unique way our mind works, we are more easily connected and engaged with human elements. A good story often makes you feel like a real person is actually talking to you. So by putting more personality and character into your story (and reinforce it with design), you can create stronger emotional bond between you (or your brand) and your audiences.
“The best design and the best story usually comes from a strong sense of individual personality; they come from people putting more of themselves into their work, from not wanting to be seen as being like everybody else.” by John Simmons in .
