BRIEF // Wellington brewery Garage Project had a popular beer, a finished beer label and a problem... the existing art was a full-colour piece, hand-painted by talented local artist Evan Purdie - and with a new focus on canning their beer, the sleeved labelling technique for full-colour can art was both unreliable and costly.
The client needed new flat colour artwork (printable on a can-line) exclusively for canning Death From Above that captured the spirit of the original concept without being a few colour knock-off. The bottle and tap badge art would continue to feature Purdie's original art, but new cans released in 330ml and 440ml sizes would feature new artwork customised for printed cans.
Mixing Indochine flavours like mango and Vietnamese mint, and American hopes, there was a delicate balance to referencing the Vietnamese influences and the beer's war-era name.
Original bottle artwork by Evan Purdie.
Select first concept pass sketches, influenced by Vietnamese posters, the local landscape and my own trips in the region.
Second pass concept, combining some favoured elements from pass one, and features from the oringal bottle artwork to help tie the form factors together. Care taken to leave space for graphics and barcodes etc.
Third pass concept, pushing the framing concept further, while also opening up the landscape further, allowing more helicopters in the distance. Care is taken to take both the 440 and the 330 size into account.
High-tech 'in the hand' test.
Click for a higher resolution. Final artwork. Bamboo elements were brought back in from the early concepts to give the incoming graphics more punch and legibility, and to help the overprinting wrap-around look tidy at the back.
Revised typography, inspired by original bottle design. It needed to look like stencilled graffiti on the temple gates.
Monkey and mango.
Hidden hop monster in archway, with peace sign eyeball.
Hop Ace in the hole, and North American focused map camouflage helmet.
More hidden hop elements. The arch also has hidden references to the brewer 'GP' and the beer's strength '7.5'. Sensing a pattern yet? Lime tree on left, and hop vine crawling over the arch.
440ml product shot, produced by Andrew Martis.
Can re-launch poster. Pun by Garage Project.