Peak of Perfection
Craft beer lineup receives packaging evolution.
With resurgence of the craft brewery in America, Summit Brewing Company’s package design blended in with the mundane appearance of other brewers’ package designs on the market. Mark Stutrud, founder and brewmaster, aspired a return to the heritage of the brand, revitalizing the inception of Summit, and why Stutrud started brewing in the first place. Enter Duffy & Partners (www.duffy.com), a Minneapolis-based design firm. “They wanted an evolution, not a revolution. They didn’t want to start from scratch, knowing that they have a great heritage,” says Joseph Duffy IV, design director at Duffy & Partners.
Duffy & Partners searched for existing equity in the Summit brand to work with. The Summit name provided for a great foundation. Summit, the term not only represents the peak of a mountain, but also a main historic city street significant in St. Paul. “We basically took Summit and we tipped it from an arch underneath to make it into a street sign. Angling it into a chevron shape,” This design application, described by Duffy, transformed the Summit logo into a street sign for “Summit Avenue” and evokes the incline of a peak, representing the word summit, in general.
Each beer variety features a package design that tells a story, paying homage to the city of St. Paul or state of Minnesota. Influenced by Art Deco, the color palette for the Summit lineup is made up of dusty jewel tones, bringing illustrations to life with a slightly rustic, grey tinge.
One challenge to address while designing the Summit packaging included achieving consistency throughout the various substrates used, including: labels, cardboard coated six-packs, uncoated cardboard cases. “We basically carried around
a master physical Pantone chip board and we went to all of the press checks with the different printers, throughout
the state and around the country and literally had to match as best as we could to try to make sure they all held together.” explains Duffy.
Revved Up for Rally
Beer packaging celebrates extreme motor-enthusiast event.
The Dakar Rally, is an extreme sporting event that pushes the limits, as off-road drivers of motorcycles, ATVs, cars and trucks compete by testing their handling and navigational skills in stunning deserts across the globe. For the first time in Dakar’s nearly 30 year history, the event was held in Bolivia this January. Welcoming Dakar, Paceña, a Bolivian beer produced in La Paz joins forces as official sponsor of the automotive competition. In celebration of the event, a limited-edition Paceña package design was created by Argentinean branding and packaging studio, Pierini Partners (www.pierinipartners.com).
Designed by Pierini Partner’s creative CEO and graphic designer, Adrian Pierini, “The design seeks, first to reflect the extreme level of this competition by resorting to more rustic visual resources like spots, irregular strokes and diagonal composition.” The Pilsner brew’s packaging mirrors Dakar’s mainstay color palette of red, white, black and gold. “We were requested to create a high impact packaging that could break with the traditional codes of the category, and reflect in a clear way immediate emotions and feelings that the Dakar transmits,” those feelings being: action and hardiness among others explains Pierini.
Released in January 2014, to coincide with the event, an ATV and motorcycle are represented via illustrations on pack. “The images were chosen for their “threadbare” treatment, keeping the overall style. It’s location on the plane was designed to generate a sense of perspective and spatiality, considering a possible distortion due to the fold that the can has on top.” continues Pierini. Action is expressed in the Paceña logo, demanding attention. A rustic synthesis of ATV and motorcycle illustrations are placed intentionally misaligned, further enhancing the Dakar spirit. Enalbo, a Bolivian supplier produced and printed the rugged aluminum cans.
Bespoke Brandy
Package design exudes luxury via use of custom bottle.
Distiller Kvint, prominent in the wine and brandy sector for over a century, sought out the expertise of Shumi Love Design (shumilovedesign.eu) to design the packaging of its aged brandies. The end desire was to find an individual place for the product on a highly competitive shelf. This required a distinctive bottle shape that would capture the buyer’s attention and provoke handling of the product.
“In this product category, spontaneous purchases are virtually inexistent,” says designer at Shumi Love Design,
Valerii Sumilvo.
Markings VS, VSOP and XO distinguish the ranking of brandies in the product lineup, according to age, or maturation in oak barrels. Brandies available in the three age groups are distinguished based on maturity through label color markers, ranging from a chocolate-brown to a deep black hue. The two-part paper labels are sourced by Fedrigoni (www.fedrigoni.com) and printed by Financial Papers printing house (website under construction).
Strict measurements for bottle height, width and girth were established with an end objective of reflecting the brand’s personality while accommodating the brand’s coat of arms on pack. Several artistic council meetings with the brand led to the 3-D creation of a full-scale bottle mold. A specialist constructed bottle molds using a special type of sculpturing plaster according to bottle blueprint specifications. The brand’s coat of arms was simplified to appear in the form of embossed glass.
Locally produced Moldovan glass was utilized and sourced by Glass Container Company (www.gcc.md). A polilaminate material closure was selected and produced by FirstLine (www.firstline.md).
Dairy Derivation
Product found in unexpected category calls for creative package design.
“The whole concept started about four years ago, I was trying to figure out the process myself and getting the right yeast. But I could never quite get it down,” Garren Visser, president of Leche Spirits, maker of Milk Money Vodka recalls, beginning the journey of reaching out to distillers in hopes of transforming his dream of fermenting lactose into alcohol to create a dairy-based vodka. The journey gained fuel when Visser discovered a pharmaceutical company in New Zealand that successfully produced the lactose conversion process Visser was so eager to achieve.
Milk Money Vodka, imported from New Zealand enlisted the help of packaging specialist, Saxco International (www.saxcointl.com). Jimmy Owens, new product representative for Saxco International reports, “Our role was to help create a package that would carry through with the new brand’s milk-related theme by developing a design which also displayed a noteworthy eye appeal and bold shelf presence.” Owens performed the difficult task of finding the tear dropped shaped 750-mL glass structure, reminiscent of a classic old fashioned milk bottle, supplied by Vetreria Etrusca (www.vetreriaetrusca.it).
Saxco also sourced and supplied a metal hinged swing-top closure with white plastic cap and sought out assistance from RockTenn (www.rocktenn.com) to design and produce a six-bottle white shipping carton with black imprint to continue with the dairy reference. Keen on representing the dairy connection via packaging, a decorative design image mirroring the spots on a Holstein cow were applied by vendor Serigraphie Richford (www.serigraphierichford.com/en). The decorative design image was created by Johannes Schulz (johannes-schulz.com) of Germany. “We knew we wanted it to be the Holstein design and keep an old school milk bottle feel, but with a modern twist on it,” says Visser.
Set to launch in Visser’s home state of New Mexico first, and later in the state of Colorado Milk Money Vodka is 40% alcohol by volume and 80-proof, twice distilled and gluten-free, unless you count the grain the cow is eating, jokes Visser.