I had the pleasure of working on an exciting new project from Byron Bay based brewery, Stone and Wood. From their website: The Mash Collective is an opportunity for people from all walks of life to come together, share their personal obsessions and create a brew from a common ground, which is a love of beer.
I was invited to help design the project’s logo, website illustration and the label for the first brew off the rank. It was an unique opportunity to create an artwork in two completely different styles.
The project came in three parts
The logo:
We decided to keep it pretty simple as it was to be used in various ways, from badges to notebooks and more importantly it was going to be on all further labels and will need to be able to be adapted into the various artists styles.
Next up was the the brand illustration for the website and for promoting the collective. The emphasis here was on the collective and the various types of people that would come together for each one. They were also keen not to have something too clean looking.
After throwing around ideas we decided to run with a cross section of a kind of communal Byron beach brew house, showing people working in their various artistic endeavors while the brewer at the heart of the house created his new brew. Below shows the progression of the illustration from thumbnail to sketch to how it finally appeared on the website, as well as a 2 colour limited edition silkscreen to be handed out to further participants. This was a great opportunity to use my more cartoony style.
At the same time I started developing the label image. The guys sent through a bunch of ideas and concepts they liked but pretty much gave me free reign. The new beer was to be called Amasia based on the theory of a super continent forming to create a new world. The beer itself was a Rumweizen. The tasting notes that I was given were that it was to be a German dunkleweizen mashed t together with molasses, finished off with a splash of rum and that it was going to be around 7%, serious stuff. I thumbed out some ideas around the new world , rum, sea captain idea.
They dug the one with the Captain/tentacles motif . I refined the sketch and then with a bit of back and forthing they chose the smoke style font which was great as it was the one as that I was leaning towards.
With that it was time to ink and colour. My colouring process is quiet organic , I rarely do any planning I just go for it tweaking it along the way. With that done it was sent off to the their designer to lay out all the important text stuff and sent off to the printer. I was really happy how this turned out, such a smooth project from beginning to end, mainly due to the clients being so open to ideas which is a true testament to their collaborative,community based ideals. As for the beer itself, I’m happy to say it is pretty damn tasty.
