With small and independent craft breweries continuing to grow, I became inspired in how this translates into design. Fundamentally these startups possess a motivated, do-it-yourself attitude that encourages you to come as you're and enjoy their local taps. While each have similar goals, these businesses need unique branding to set themselves apart.
Blue House Brewery embraces where they started back in their blue painted New England Colonial. To preserve this the Logo uses a straight on shot of the house in a muted blue tone with a complimentary background. The font is a loose, chipped, and skewed to the flat design. The roof encourages the viewers eye to lead into the logo, to create depth. With the center focus falling on the logo and 'Blue House', it allows the design to be easily scaled at various sizes.
Flat design has been around since the 1950s and 60s. It's popularity continues to surge with modern tech companies like Apple shifting their entire interface over to this aesthetic. This design exercise was an opportunity to experiment with silhouettes. Examples A-D are supporting elements to the main structures. Early on I was trying out ways to incorporate movement in the image, so I tried out a wind turbine. A nice symmetrical element to help lead the eye towards the buildings. Unfortunately, when it was arranged in the shot, I felt it didn't lend itself to the 'colonial' narrative and was drawing more attention to itself.
This was a design challenge in creating depth as well as using a restricted palette.
This flat design incorporates long shadows that have emerged as a another tool to add depth while creating some leading lines for the viewer.
A company's brand, products and employees are extensions of the larger company message. These elements need users to continue to flourish. That's where a contact page is crucial to supporting users in a friendly, easy to digest fashion.
Text and icons are framed in a symmetrical layout to create a hierarchy of how to proceed. The user is informed that around the clock support is available and then how they can get to that support (mobile, online chat, or mail). Mail and Online Chat will be the most popular, so they're positioned in the center.
Using a collage layering of images, custom Photoshop brushes, and varied textures. The layout us minimal letters and numbers to lead the eye to center of the frame.
