Apricot Pale Ale Label Design for Redchurch Brewery
Craft beer bottle label and keg badge design with hand-drawn elements
I was commissioned by Redchurch Brewery to create a bottle label and a keg badge for the Apricot Pale Ale, a collaboration brew with Vibrant Forest Brewery. The client's instructions were that they wanted a minimal, text-based design without illustrations, but I thought it was quite cruel to hire an illustrator and forbid him to draw;)
I've prepared a presentation of few different proposals along their guidelines, in-between which I also slipped in this design, and proceeded to meet the client. I was very pleased when they unanimously decided that this was in fact the strongest design and they also really liked the illustrations. Later the label design also received great feedback from the supermarket buyer.
"I love the artwork!"
Sarah Hammond, Beer & Cider Buyer at Waitrose & Partners
Since Apricot Pale Ale is a collab brew I decided to use letter X as the central part of the label design. This device represents not only a collaboration between the two breweries, but also the fusion of flavours: apricot and hops. The marbling texture of the background refers to the beautiful, abstract Vibrant Forest can labels, some of my favourite beer packaging out there.
I was also involved in writing and correction of the copy for the label. The text layout and print preparation was done using Adobe Illustrator. The label was litho printed with matt finish and gloss varnish applied only over the apricot, hop and RB round logo at the back, giving these areas nice shine and a different feel to hand.
The illustrations were initially drawn in pen and ink on paper and than redrawn using Wacom Cintiq tablet for a clean and crisp line. The colour was applied digitally using Adobe Photoshop.
