Valhalla Label Design for Boot Beer Brewery
Hand-drawn craft beer can label and pump clip design
I was commissioned by Boot Beer Brewery a complete redesign of the can label and pump clip for their best selling beer - Valhalla Helles Lager. The brewery is located in Repton, Derbyshire, an English village with a rich Viking heritage. I was instructed by the client to emphasise this historical connection in the label design by including Ivar the Bootless, a fictional Viking warrior character.
The commission also included a complete redesign of the label and pump clip layout, which was done using Adobe Illustrator. I've created a series of vector icons to be used in the ingredients infographic, serving glass suggestion and the vegan friendly logo. Prior to the label redesign I was also commissioned a complete rebrand of the Boot Beer brewery, which included refreshing of their old logo. I've created few different versions of the logo, of which two of them can be seen on the Valhalla can label above.
The central illustration was initially drawn in pen and ink on paper and once approved by the client it was scanned and than retouched in Photoshop using Wacom Cintiq tablet for a clean and crisp line. Since the line drawing is very detailed I've decided to limit the colour pallet to 3 highly contrasting shades of blue, making the Viking face stand out against the background and giving his eyes a piercing gaze.
Creating a simple, but strong central illustration and limiting the colours on the can label also ensures that the beer will stand out on the store shelf against other craft beers, which very often use bright, multicoloured pallets and "loud" graphics.
