DERBI JUNIOR — Turning a debut record into something you drink before you listen

THE CHALLENGE

A debut record lives or dies by how it enters the world. Derbi Junior needed an identity, but the easy route was obvious: a gig poster aesthetic, a merch drop, the usual visual shorthand for "new band." None of that would have carried what the title actually meant to them. The brief wasn't only to design packaging for a record. It was to find the one object that could hold both the music and the meaning behind its name, and make that object the way people actually encountered the record for the first time.

THE APPROACH

We started from the title, not from the sound. El vi que alimenta, "the wine that nourishes", wasn't a lyric we illustrated, it was the instruction: if the record was named after wine, the record needed to be released as wine. That reframing produced the line that carried the whole project: if music is meant to be shared, opening a bottle should be the beginning of a listening ritual. The label stopped being packaging and became the first track, every mark on it designed as a way into the record rather than decoration around it.

THE WORK

The lettering was drawn by hand, not set from a typeface catalogue, giving the band's name and every piece of text on the label the same imperfect, human weight as handwriting on a lyric sheet. The illustrations that run across the label were also hand-drawn, built line by line to carry the intensity and warmth of the record rather than sit as generic wine-label ornament. The system extended beyond the bottle: long tee printing for the accompanying merch, and photography to document the full object as a single, coherent piece.

If music is meant to be shared, opening a bottle should be the beginning of a listening ritual.

THE OUTCOME

A debut LP that doesn't launch with a poster or a single cover, but with a bottle you open. The ritual of pouring a glass becomes the ritual of pressing play, the record's meaning made physical instead of illustrated.