We had a mini career fair of sorts recently. One company that attended was a design studio that worked directly with Boundary Brewing. Boundary are a brand who’s products are a personal favourite of mine, with this in mind it felt only natural to submit an entry toward their competition.
Create a label for Boundarys newest beer, “Free Thinking”.
We were provided with a blank label to use for the design. You can see this to the right.
I began my research by looking at their current labels. I knew this would be a bit of an ambigious project for me as Boundary labels are actually prints of hand painted works. This is far from my forte. You can see examples of these labels below.
Pillows is my personal favourite.
As someone with very limited illustrative abilities I felt I had to get creative with my approach. I focused on the name to derive inspiration for this one. “Free Thinking” to me conveyed this idea of individuality, or maybe the complete opposite. This led me down a path of envisioning each can be different. Logistically this would be a nightmare so I toned it town to 6 iterations of the same can that would be sold. I drew simple little faces on each label. Paired with varying strong colours it felt like it gave the cans their own little identities. I didn’t hate this approach but it was very far from a final product.
My previous approach was very off brand as Boundarys image tends to feel much more refined, this can be seen within their established labels, using hand painted works to give their beer an identity. That being said I felt conceptually I was tapping in to something that could work.
I felt the name of the beer could be interpreted sarcastically. The term free thinking/free thinkers can get thrown around a lot and has been appropriated by crowds who might be deemed the opposite. I thought this could work as an approach. I tried to highlight this irony, again through juvenile illustration.
This attempt definitely felt more sound in terms of appeal but it still wasn’t quite there.
