TIMELINE

6 weeks

TOOLS

Analog Illustration
Procreate
Illustrator
Photoshop

ROLES

Illustration
Typography
Layout

TEAM

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OVERVIEW

The well established Seattle based craft brewery in Interbay, Holy Mountain, released a seasonal summer variety requiring a cohesive and thematic label and coaster design. This label needed to adhere to Holy Mountain’s current brand guidelines, in terms of typographic and illustration style.

RESEARCH

Holy Mountain is a brewery that focuses on small batch, specialized craft beers which are in constant rotation throughout the year. Before getting started on any form of brainstorming, I conducted a brand audit to better understand Holy Mountain’s preexisting visual language and brand guidelines. This gave me a starting point for structure in terming of label design. Holy mountain uses one typeface, Novecento, on all of their products and merchandise. Likewise, can and bottle labels have the same basic structure, with two sets of lines at the top and bottom of the label, bordering the holy mountain log and Wordmark. Other small details, such as typical placement of the ABV. A big part of the Holy Mountain brand in is the art they incorporate on their labels and designs and tend to create a lot of merchandise based on that artwork. Clothing such as hoodies, beanies and t-shirts, sometimes adding in more niche items such as bandanas or posters have all been created in the past.

In terms of illustrative style and use of color, Holy Mountain has fairly rigid standards. Labels are typically white on black, red on black, and on occasion there is an inverse of black on white which is usually reserved for a larger run saison. Because this label was for a small run season beer I proceeded with on brand color usage, working white on black. Additionally the illustrative style was primarily line drawings, sometimes more vector based and uniform, others with more natural line work seen in typical hand done illustrative styles. The visuals and naming conventions tend to be of occult nature tied in with mysticism and usually reference animals.

With summer in mind, I moved into brainstorming possible solutions in terms of a visual direction. Because of the occult nature of Holy Mountain’s existing imagery, I was drawn to certain folklore and metaphorical stories as well as the idea of rituals and the pagan religion as inspiration. I began exploring certain concepts related to summer. I came across Litha, which is the pagan holiday that celebrates the summer solstice, worshiping the sun for all that it gives. I felt like this was perfect to pull inspiration from.

I started out sketching visuals and originally was leaning in the direction of representing Litha as a female figure but I also was drawn to the idea of hands reaching up toward the Sun, a literal depiction of worship. In my exploratory sketches summer foliage was also a visual I played with as well as fire, representing summer heat or summer sun. I took into consideration how I might incorporate other more metaphorical meanings of summer, like death and rebirth.

STRATEGY

The backbone of the Litha celebration is sun worship, which a more literal depiction of this feeling like the clearest representation. I took the initial illustration and built it out include plants, foliage, insects and animals, all of which flourish in the summer sun.

To build on the initial concept, I expanded the imagery to include foliage, wildlife, and insects that flourish during the summertime. Originally, I started with the design of the hands and the sun and built that illustration out further starting with the design for the 22 oz bottle. From there, I took that initial design and made some tweaks and expanded out the foliage and wildlife to tell a bigger story on the growler label.

Finally, I took the core concept of the hands reaching out to the sun and wrapped that around the entire coaster to create a coaster imagery.

GROWLER ILLUSTRATION