Friday night — making a big book about whiskey.
Designing tank labels for all of Stranahan’s distillery tanks, fermenters, stills, and storage tanks.
Most people don’t know it, but every bottle of Stranahan’s is hand- bottled, labeled, and packaged by volunteers and friends at Bottling Parties (with pizza and a bottle of Stranahan’s as “payment”).
Last week, as a sort of celebration, The Made Shop and a bunch of our friends went down to the distillery to run the bottling line for a day on one of the first batches bearing the new labels we designed.
All our friends in this video are dear to us — and, I’m proud to say we nearly set a record for speed and quality control :) If you happen to pick up a bottle in the next few months, look for Batch #90 — that’s us!
(Video shot and produced by Michael Chiarelli)
Just got the new brochures we designed for Stranahan’s Whiskey back from the printers Also, rumor has it that the last bottling crew to come through the distillery was filling up the NEW bottles we designed — so you just might start seeing those out in the wild soon :D
Speaking of our new designer, here’s the new Stranahan’s Whiskey website Adam and I designed and developed together. More exciting work over there (and on tumblr) coming soon!
Working on some new packaging design ideas for Stranahan’s limited release Snowflake gift box.
A little sneak-peek of our Stranahan’s tasting bar design (in progress). Wall section and bar materials design mock-up.
Last night I kept dreaming of this image of our Stranahan’s neon sign logo flickering and floating in a little copse of aspen trees in the Colorado snow. So this morning I woke up early and put together a little test rendering of the idea. I’m still new to motion graphics and After Effects, but I think I ended up capturing the image just as I saw it in the night. (HD on Vimeo)
First prototype of our new Stranahan’s bottle design. A few more adjustments to be made, but we’re nearly there!
A little sneak preview of the fantastically-large exposed-neon sign we designed of our new Stranahan’s Whiskey logo going up at their Denver distillery soon!
There’s something a little bit unnerving — and equally amazing — about walking in to see a 9 foot tall, glowing neon letter that Nathan and I meticulously designed together via screensharing in Illustrator months ago. I mean, it’s nice to see a logo you made printed on a business card, but… :)
We’ll definitely be filming the installation with Michael (who shot our giant Son Lux album art smoke bomb photoshoot) and posting that soon!
Stranahan’s (extremely) Limited Release Snowflake Whiskey
There’s not much better than getting a gift of rare whiskey on Christmas Eve morning. But when it comes in a package that you yourself designed and comes directly from the people you designed it for, well that’s extra special.
Back when we started The Made Shop nearly 10 years ago and we were just a fledgling idea about wanting to work with family and make amazing things together, Zachary and I had always talked about two dream jobs: designing a book cover, and designing a whiskey bottle. (Because: obviously).
For the last six months, since about mid-summer, The Made Shop has been quietly working with Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey on a beautiful redesign of the brand, logos, typography, labels, as well as some much bigger projects that are still under wraps (which we can’t wait to show you all).
Nathan, Kim, Zachary, and I were all loyal fans of their Whiskey long before we could have even dreamed of one day working for them. It’s quite hard to get, especially outside of Colorado, but if you’ve had the pleasure of tasting it, you know what we mean. It’s hands-down my favorite whiskey. And about a year ago we were all just taking a tour of their Denver Distillery simply as whiskey-geek fans when Nathan decided to introduce us to the guide and let them know what we do on the off-chance they ever needed new design work.
To make quite a long story short: this morning, for Christmas, a bottle of Stranahan’s Limited Release Snowflake Whiskey, wrapped in packaging and branded with a logo we all designed, arrived at The Made Shop doorstep. It’s a wonderful gift to receive as the year ends and we remember ten years ago when this whole thing was just a big crazy dream.
Cheers!
(p.s. these photos show the special Snowflake gift packaging. We’ll be posting our new designs for the actual bottles soon :)
loading…
