Hannibal Lecter and Princess Bride Wines For The Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas

The Drafthouse Cinemas, a chain of movie theaters that serve food and wine, have occasionally commissioned special movie-related wines which they pair up with the appropriate meals and serve at their unique cinemas. The special movie-themed wines are beautifully designed and packaged with labels and branding by the Austin based creative firm Helms Workshop.



SILENCE OF THE LAMB WINES


Their latest offering is a Chianti and Pinot Grigio inspired by the movie Silence Of The Lambs.







“The Cannibal Chianti” is a DOCG-wine from a vineyard situated between Florence and Sienna. It is a blend of 85% Sangiovese, balanced with smaller contributions of Canaiolo and Malvasia del Chianti. The nose is loaded with dark berry fruit with bass notes of allspice and baked quince. Its mouth feel is medium-bodied and well balanced, with savory plum and tobacco leaf notes leading to a slight sandalwood finish.



“Suit Yourself Pinot Grigio” is a 2012 vintage with a mixture of fruit from California’s Central Coast and inland vineyards. It offers a lush bouquet of tangerine and orange blossom. The palate starts with a crisp entry and a velvety mouth feel that bursts into flavors of tropical peach and Mexican limes with just a hint of honey, leading to a zesty, citrus-laced finish.



A limited number of packaged wine sets will be available for purchase online only. “The Cannibal Chianti” set comes with a leather red dragon bag of fava beans with a recipe for their preparation by Alamo Chef Trish Eichelberger. The “Suit Yourself Pinot Grigio” set features a burlap bag containing a bottle of Buffalo Bill lotion.


above: The four-course menu, created by Alamo Drafthouse Austin Market Chef Trish Eichelberger served at their various locations, along with the wines and movie.

To develop the bottle and package design of these wines, Alamo Drafthouse again turned to local Austin creative firm Helms Workshop. The subtle yet intricate designs unfold like a puzzle for fans of the movie, with tiny details referencing the film and its central characters of Buffalo Bill, Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling.



“Suit Yourself Pinot Grigio” and “The Cannibal Chianti” will only be available for one year. Both of these covetable wines will be available at all Alamo Drafthouse locations for $8 a glass and $32 a bottle (prices may vary).

Retail bottles are available for purchase here and at select Alamo Drafthouse locations where local laws permit.

PRINCESS BRIDE WINES
Hello. My Name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

UPDATE: The Princess Bride Wines ARE still available for purchase, only without the box or extra goodies. You can buy them here.

Their previous offering, launched last year on Valentine's Day, was also beautifully designed by Helms Workshop. The movie-themed wines featured a Cabernet and a White inspired by the cult classic The Princess Bride.



As fans will recognize, “The Bottle Of Wits,” is derived from the iconic “battle of wits” scene when Westley first rescues Princess Buttercup from Vizzini and his henchmen.



The custom wine line includes two varietals: “Inconceivable Cab” and “As You Wish White”.

The As You Wish White:


The Inconceivable Cab:


Wine charms: A six-fingered man. A Sicilian. The Dread Pirate Roberts. Princess Buttercup:


The menu that accompanied the Princess bride Wines and movie showing :


The folks over at Helms Workshop in Austin had this to say about the project:
"When you leave design school and look for work with your portfolio of fictitious student projects, half of your interviewers pause to tell you that, in the “real world,” you’ll never have the opportunity to design wine packaging. Much less, packaging themed after one of your favorite movies. Those folks never had the chance to work with Tim League and the team at Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas.





In looking at developing an identity for Alamo’s in-house branded wines, we quickly decided that it would be impossible to sum up everything that makes the Alamo unique in a single packaging system. Why not redesign the wine each year, based on a film that aligns with the brand? Alamo’s 2012 offering became two wines inspired by The Princess Bride, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the film."

“The “Battle of Wits” sequence between Cary Elwes and Wallace Shawn easily stands toe-to-toe with “the Sideways Spit Bucket” and “The Silence of the Lambs Chianti slurp” as wine’s shining moment in film,” said Alamo CEO and Founder Tim League. Workshop worked to pack the full scope and wonder of the film experience into the packaging.

Buy the Princess Bride wines (bottles only) here.

All photos of Silence of the Lambs Wines courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse
All Princess bride Wine photos with streamer backgrounds by Annie Ray
other photos courtesy of Helms Workshop

Test Your Typeface and Brand Knowledge With Two Cool Memory Games

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog is a Typeface Memory Game based on the classic game of matching two images.




This very attractively finished typographic memory game includes 25 variations of the letter ‘A’, each in a different letter type. Players attempt to find the matching A’s in the same letter type. The player who has the highest number of matching letters wins the game. 
Typographic information about the letter is included on the card, and a separate folder provides a general history of the typography. This is an enjoyable and instructive game for graphic designers and anyone who is fascinated by letter types.
 As you play, you increasingly recognize what are often very subtle differences between the letters and more about the details of the letter types. They become progressively easier to recognize and distinguish from one another (even Univers and Helvetica!)



Among the letter types included in the game are Akzidenz Grotesk, Baskerville, Centaur, Garamond, Helvetica Rockwell, Times New Roman, Univers and many more. 
The game was assembled and designed by the Brazilian design studio, ps.2 arquitetura + design.



Design: ps.2 arquitetura + design
Format: hardcover
Dimensions: 2 x 25 cards






The Brand Memory Gameis another addition to the successful BIS memory games series, a new game about the knowledge of brands. 
For this game, Hendrik-Jan Grievink has made a selection of 30 internationally
 well-known brands, showing neither logo nor name on the images of the matching pairs.

The challenge is to find matching pairs of a brand, based solely on their characteristic colors and style elements and a short description of the brand.




Playing this game is great fun and offers an excellent test of your brand
 knowledge. 

Hendrik-Jan Grievink is also one of the creators of the Fake for Real Memory Game, which has already gone into its fifth edition.

Design: Hendrik-Jan Grievink
Format: hardcover
Dimensions: 2 x 30 cards

Chocolate On A Chain. Edible Jewelry by Wendy Mahr

Jewelry designer Wendy Mahr has a small sampling of real edible jewelry amongst her other gemstone jewelry offerings. Real chocolate covered malted milk balls are decorated with real edible gold leaf and turned into a ring, a pair of earrings and three different necklaces. The yummy gems are paired with non-edible findings such as wire, cord and chain. And what's really neat is that once you've eaten the chocolate, if you want to reuse/recycle what's left after the chocolate’s gone, you can send it back and for prices from $25-$45 (depending upon the piece) +shipping and they'll replace the chocolate with pearls, or other available stones for you.

Golden Chocolate Ring:


Everything is edible except for the wire and if you hold out and keep it safely tucked away, you can be the hit of the party several times.
For an additional $25+shipping, Wendy Mahr can reuse/recycle the wire into a new ring.
Price: $55

Chocolate Earrings:


Malted milk balls with edible gold leaf on gold-filled earwires. Tested in the mid-day Miami heat, the edible earrings did not melt.
Price: $55

Pretty Chocolate Necklace:


A gold filled chain with one edible real chocolate ball with edible gold leaf. Each additional ball is $10.
Price: $55

Children's Chocolate Necklace on Golden Cord:


The children's version of their Pretty Chocolate necklace.
Order them in bunches for party favors, but don’t eat the cord - it’s the only non-edible part.
Price: $30

Center of Attention Chocolate Necklace:


Gold filled wire and clasp and edible gold leaf make for a great malted milk ball fashion accessory.
Is it real? Yes. Will it melt? No, at least not when they were tested in the sweltering Miami heat. They smell great, look really pretty, and you can wear it several times, or until you eat them. (Please don’t eat the wire).
If you want to reuse/recycle after the chocolate’s days are over, you can send it back and for $45+shipping, they’ll replace the chocolate with pearls, or other available stones.
Price: $150

Packaging:


Ready for gift-giving, their edible earrings, ring or single necklaces come in this clear gift box finished with shimmering gold ribbon. Cost of box is included in shipping charges. Available for all edible jewelry items, except the 9-ball necklace which comes in a white wendy mahr jewelry box (not shown).

Shop for Wendy Mahr's Edible Jewelry here

The Beautifully Ethereal, Surreal Work Of Artist Chiara Fersini aka Himitsuhana.

If Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Maxfield Parrish and Mark Ryden had a baby (or spliced their genes together), it would be Chiara Fersini.



The 27 year old Italian visual artist who is also known by the name of her site, Himitsuhana, only recently became interested in photography after a 2007 trip to Japan. A self-proclaimed "lover of photoshop," Chiara transforms her photographs into surreal, ethereal portraits. The sensual and spiritual imagery is full of romance and mystery. In many instances, the photographs look like paintings and several are self-portraits. While her images are reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and photography, they have an edge, contemporizing them.



Chiara says her work is more than just a passion for photography and digital manipulation, but reveals her inner emotions and dreams, making them very personal. I'm only glad, she's willing to share them with us. Fiercely copyright protected, I received written permission from Chiara to share the images in this post with you.





















About the artist:


"My aim is to portray every single glance of the human soul and encourage people to dream and never stop believing in dreams."-- Chiara Fersini

Chiara Fersini (b. 1986) took a degree in Foreign Languages, English and Japanese. Since she was a child she was surrounded by art. Her mother, a painter and decorator, handed down to her the love for beauty and encouraged her inclination for visual arts. Her interest for photography is very recent; it started out after a study journey in Japan in 2007 and grew faster and faster coinciding with a falling in love with Photoshop. But photography is not just a passion for Chiara, it is the best way to show that intricate world that she feels inside. She put into her works her fears, dreams, her sorrow and joy and seeing them happening into images is a manner to feel free.

Himitsuhana Photography

The following links contain much of her work and on some, prints can be purchased:
Saatchi Online
Flickr
Red Bubble
Blue Canvas
Carbonmade

all images in this post are ©chiara fersini and may not be reproduced without her permission

Corporate States of America by Steve Lovelace

After writing an article about corporate feudalism, writer, artist and photographer Steve Lovelace took it upon himself to map out, subjectively, each state within the US and the corresponding corporations he felt best represented that state and the inhabitants within.



The visuals above illustrate his hypothesis that "that, as corporations become the dominant organizations on Earth, people will start thinking of themselves as citizens of Apple or partisans of Starbucks."

Steve describes the project as follows:

"This is a map of “The Corporate States of America”. For each of the fifty states (and the District of Columbia), I selected a corporation or brand that best represented the states.

My criteria are subjective, but in each case, I tried to use a brand that a) is based in that state and b) is still in business (as of 2012). I created this map after writing an article about corporate feudalism. My hypothesis is that, as corporations and non-governmental organizations grow in power, the power of nation states will become increasingly irrelevant. We’re already seeing this on a small scale, as people turn to the Internet to make friends, instead of befriending their neighbors. I think that, as corporations become the dominant organizations on Earth, people will start thinking of themselves as citizens of Apple or partisans of Starbucks.

One thing I discovered while writing this article is that corporations are not evenly distributed across the country. Some states, such New Mexico, Alaska, Montana and West Virginia, simply do not host many big corporations. Others host so many that choosing one was difficult. In these cases, I went with the company that I though best represented the state, rather than the biggest or most notorious. Hence, I used Dr Pepper for Texas instead of ExxonMobil."

Steve Lovelace