Wine Design Exchange: andstudio is trading the studio desk for the vineyard

Lithuanian studio andstudio, celebrated European Design Awards winner, is launching a new kind of branding project. Called Wine Design Exchange, the project sends the andstudio team to live and work at a winery for a full week, embedding themselves in the production process before building a complete brand: strategy, positioning, identity, labels, and packaging.

It’s a fitting project for andstudio to be behind. This isn’t their first experiment in swapping one creative environment for another — in 2019, the studio traded offices entirely with an Italian studio, Muttnik, for two weeks, just to see what a different culture and context would do to their work. Wine Design Exchange takes that same instinct and points it somewhere new.

Why wineries, why now

The timing isn’t accidental. Europe’s wineries, and family-owned ones in particular, are under real pressure. Alcohol consumption is falling (62% of people under 35 say they drink less than they used to, compared to 72% two decades ago) and in a shrinking, more competitive market, the label matters more than ever: 85% of consumers say they choose a bottle of wine on packaging alone.

andstudio’s read on this is that branding isn’t a finishing touch for wineries anymore, it’s a survival tool. Wine Design Exchange is built to prove that out in practice, and to do it directly with the people who make the wine, not from a brief handed over remotely.

“We want to do so much more than just make some labels,” says Augustinas Paukštė, Creative Director and Partner at andstudio. “We see branding as a business tool, not decoration. We want every winery to leave with a clearer positioning, stronger export potential, and a practical roadmap they can use long after we’ve gone home. This isn’t a creative stunt or a working holiday. The week is simply our way of doing the work properly.”

Deliberately small

Despite the ambition behind it, andstudio is keeping Wine Design Exchange tightly scoped on purpose. Rather than scaling into a high-volume programme, Paukštė says the realistic pace is one to three residencies a year; and sometimes with collaborators from outside the studio joining the team on-site.

“We see it more as a travelling design clinic,” Paukštė says. “A small, carefully selected team immerses itself in one winery, meets the people behind it, experiences the place and works closely with them to solve a specific challenge. The social and cultural aspect is as important as the final design outcome — living, eating, tasting and working together creates a very different kind of relationship than a traditional agency process.”

He also sees it as a testing ground for the studio itself: “For us, it also creates a platform and sandbox where we can test faster sprint formats, co-creation methods and new ways of collaborating with clients. So it may grow slightly, but intimacy and direct involvement are fundamental to the idea.”

How it works

Applications are open now at winedesign.exchange, and the initiative will run on an ongoing basis, with one winery selected each year. andstudio is open to wineries anywhere in the world and prepared to travel to wherever the selected winery is based.

The process starts with an intensive one-week residency, during which the team works alongside the winemakers, explores the region, and gets to know the production process, the business’s challenges, and its ambitions. That’s followed by four to six months of branding work — strategy, positioning, visual identity, and packaging — resulting in a practical roadmap the winery can act on.

Selection isn’t based on size, location, or how developed a winery’s current branding already is. Instead, andstudio is prioritizing independent and family-owned wineries with a distinctive story or philosophy, real business ambitions, and a genuine openness to rethinking how they present themselves.

There’s also an unusual compensation model behind it: rather than charging their standard agency fee, andstudio is only asking participating wineries to cover travel, accommodation, and meals.

“We know the chances of an Italian winery discovering a branding studio from Lithuania are pretty small,” Paukštė says. “So we wanted to remove that barrier completely and create an offer that feels irresistible. If we’re asking wineries to trust us, we should be willing to take the first step. We’re looking for wineries that want to challenge themselves, just as much as we want to challenge ourselves.”

Where the idea came from

he concept traces back to a month-long studio exchange andstudio did with a design studio in Florence before the pandemic. Long evenings in local restaurants and wine bars became an unexpected education.

“That was the first time we experienced wine through the people who make and drink it every day,” Paukštė says. “The conversations felt incredibly familiar. People spoke about wine with the same passion we speak about design. That’s when we fell in love with the culture around it. The experience stayed with us and eventually evolved into a concept that is Wine Design Exchange.”

For Paukštė, wine and design share a particular kind of expressivity: room for personality, experimentation, storytelling. But he’s clear that this only comes through in person. Remote pitching doesn’t cut it. “Many wineries are incredibly innovative in the vineyard and cellar but surprisingly conservative when it comes to communication,” he says. “There’s still a belief that great wine sells itself. We think great wine deserves a great story too.”

Wineries interested in applying, or anyone who knows one that should, can find more information and the application at winedesign.exchange.