Research and development

Researching into craft beers and breweries, the beer/bottle label is a perfect way of distributing information about the specific brand or company. The unique imagery creates a story telling the audience a little about the brand. I want to advertise my website through creating a bespoke bottle label that is instantly recognisable, the label could be accompanied by a leaflet or a flyer with further information about my website. They could be distributed to local bars and pubs, alongside a beer mat that includes my logo. As I have no intention of creating my own brew, the bottle labels could be a unique label/packaging for something that is commonly seen in a bar, something that could be part of the décor, or something that is available to purchase. The idea of hand rendering illustration for packaging design is of interest to me, the label could be a packaging on a specific item to be sold in a bar or pub.

Bottle label/packaging:
This pioneer label design has a very distinct style, the style reminds me of vintage signage.

 

This is another set of designs that I found on behance with a similar style of illustration to the pioneer branding above. This beautiful typographic quality really gives the label a bespoke image, illustration and type would be one route to choose, however I wouldn't be able to produce something so refined as this, therefore I want to try and concentrate simply on the illustrative side of design for this specific brief.

 



 

 

This illustrative logo design uses a nice colour palette. The symmetrical banner works well with the central floral design, this is something to consideration when designing my own label. This label has been used as packaging for a honey jar, but is still versatile as the label can be used on anything. I will stay away from the use of heavy block colours, as my logo uses variations of soft watercolours therefore there needs to be a clear correlation between the designs.

 

 

 

Beer Mats:

These examples of beer mats are a nice selection to look at, their designs aren't too fussy and their colour palettes are kept rather simple. Squared or circular, a beer mat would be a nice piece to produce as I can use my existing logo, which would perfectly suit a circular shaped beer mat. This is a subtle way to advertise my website, however as the design is rather unique it would be noticed more than a standard branded beer mat.

 

 

 

 

Initial Sketches for bottle label:

My idea to use two different characters initially started form this quick doodle in my notebook, so I decided to play with the idea of creating a similar old fashioned style illustration that I created for my logo, however for the bottle labels, create some slightly more refined styles based upon that idea. 

 

First sketches:

 

Scanned and refined drawings:

Sketches of hops:

Hops are always seen on some of the more decorative bottle labels, I think creating a background out of some hand rendered hops will fit nicely with my illustrations.

 

Sketch with watercolour:

Refining my sketches:

Used a colour for the stroke of each character picked from the purple tones within the hops, the images will remain line drawings and I have thickened the stroke weight so the illustrations are more prominent.

 

Use of watercolour, then refined with a fine liner for definition: