How FCKLCK gave alcohol-free brand SHWUNG a full wine disguise

When Simon Martens and Milan van Nuffel approached Antwerp and Austin-based FCKLCK Studio to design new labels for their alcohol-free wine brand SHWUNG, the brief already had a constraint baked in: a forced name change from SOBR. Rather than treat the work as packaging, the studio took on the harder question underneath it all. How do you sell something that isn’t wine like it’s wine? The answer sits on every bottle. Spumante becomes [spuh-man-tay]. Vermouth Rosso becomes [vehr-mut ros-soh]. Orange becomes [or-anj]. Each product is named the way its wine-style equivalent sounds when spoken aloud in its language of origin, written inside square brackets the same way a dictionary shows pronunciation. The names are familiar enough to register as wine and altered enough to make clear they are not. This small yet significant tension flows throughout the entire identity. Getting there meant going deep into the category first. James Krüger, Founder & Creative Director at FCKLCK, grew up in Stellenbosch, the centre of South African wine country, which gave him a long view of the conventions worth keeping and the ones worth defying. The team studied how different regions handle their packaging, from classic traditionalists to new-world upstarts, and the decision was made early and shared with the client straight away. “To position a non-alcoholic botanical drink as a wine replacement and for it to work, we needed to go full wine nerd,” Krüger explains. “Bottle choices, label hierarchy, the pompous ignorance you find on serious wine packaging. We had to go so deep into the world of wine that the product was instantly at home there.”