Student project. Rain City Brew was not a client and did not commission this work. Coursework, Everett Community College.
Rain City Brew was putting a porter into bottles and needed packaging for it. Troy Lancaster, the owner and brewmaster, told me what he wanted the beer to feel like:
Porter is a dark and hearty, warming brew. We want something that makes you feel like you're coming in out of the cold to warm up next to a fire and have a nice beer. Think lighthouses and stained glass windows.
The label
So I drew a white lighthouse against a black sky, with orange and yellow beams coming off it through the clouds over Puget Sound. The beams handle the stained glass part of the brief. They also give the label one thing to look at from across a shop, which is about all you get on a shelf.
I set it up as a real print file rather than a nice-looking comp. The government warning, the state-by-state deposit list, the barcode, the fluid ounces, the alcohol content. All of that takes up room. Leave it to the end and you spend the last hour of the job wrecking the front panel to make it fit.
