This was the very first beer label I have ever designed. I had worked with this client before, but I had never done a bigger project like this. We had many months of back and forth of trying to decide the best design, and once that was decided, it was smooth sailing with the art design. This beer label below is a design done by someone else, and my client asked if I could do something that portrayed his ideas better. He really wanted to convey the fact that he was using buffalo traces barrels to make an imperial stout. He also wanted to show buffalo crossing a river, which actually has happened around the buffalo traces point of operation. He also was going about the idea of having himself in the image, but opted out later. He was working with a local brewery to get this imperial stout made.  After scanning the physical beer label he gave me, I made some ideations in the file to show my client.

My client gave me time to think about as many ideas as I could get.  Later on, I got the idea of using a buffalo in the foreground, and these were some of the ideations I showed to my client.

This was the final thumbnail that I made with my client. I thought showing a buffalo running through the barrels in the brewery, while there was an image in the background of other buffalo crossing the river, was the best way of combining all of the ideas my client wanted to convey. I usually would bring my laptop at meetings with him so I could work on ideas then and there, to get immediate approval, and this was were that came in handy.  I made this thumbnail at his business, and once he liked the way it looked, I left to work on it at home.

An earlier progress shot of the digital painting. The buffalo in the foreground was later changed to a lighter color because it was too dark here for printing.  Also more buffalo were added in the background to look like they were coming towards the brewery.

I tried some layouts for the label itself, and some different fonts.  A mixture of these ideas was later decided on.  After this point, the time for the beer to be released was set back a few months, and there was many changes made to the beer label during these months.

This is the final art.  It took a week, and I was also taking college courses, so my time was very limited.  I also got the idea to call the buffalo Tony and give him a wooden name plate.  I ended up getting the artwork done, from start to finish within a week.  There was a lot of back and forth with my client to make sure they liked where things were going.  Originally, imperial stout was supposed to be on the barrel, but my client decided to change that into "bourbon barrel aged".

There was some things that were done afterwards, the stout is dark so it was requested that I make the foam dark, but it got lost against the dark fur of the bison.  In the end these changes were undone.

The edges of the art were faded out on the beer label, because a frame seemed too distracting.

This was one of the earlier revisions, and this was where the final placement of the deposit and the government warning was decided.  Per request of my client, I also added some dates on the barrels, added the title, and then added it to the label.

Another iteration, my client decided a frame around the description would take up room, and there was not much room after adding the Facebook page, and logos of the brewing company and his company, the wine garden. I also had to move around the artwork, so in this iteration, some of the words on the artwork got moved around, and I fixed them right after this.  

This was the final label design. I made some suggestions to my client to simplify the label.  He agreed for me to take out the some of the information and move the fluid ounces. I also created the David and Goliath logo for my client.

Overall this was a great project, because I learned many things for my later projects. I figured out how to easily make a bar-code, what needs to be on a beer label, and how things should be placed on the label for easy reading.