Bourbon Barrel Aged Bottles
Package Design & Illustration
Project Type
Role
Project Design Lead
The Brief
Adobe Creative Suite, iPad Pro, Blender, & Procreate
Year
2023-2024
Tools Used
Each winter, Boundary Bay releases a limited set of Bourbon Barrel Aged beers in bottles. The Cabin Fever and Imperial Stout are aged versions of canned favorites, so the bottle designs needed to reflect the familiar cans. In addition, each season there are a set of unique releases. While other bottles simply required reformatting, the Old Bounder Barleywine and Drunkin Pumpkin Oat Stout required new art in my time at Boundary Bay. I approached each bottle from a different lens.
The Solution
While the Imperial Stout and Cabin Fever had built in art packages to work with and fit into the “Barrel Aged” framework, with the Drunkin Pumpkin and Old Bounder I built the brands from scratch. With Port of Call, I used artwork that had been previously used in Boundary’s history and later retired. Drunkin Pumpkin is entirely hand drawn, but Old Bounder was a different challenge. I decided to model a 3D scene in Blender, envisioning the work station of the sailor “Old Bounder” inside a schooner on Boundary’s namesake bay.
Old Bounder Blender Workspace
The render used for the final product was made using Cycles. Once the scene was set, I applied a texture over it in Photoshop to give it a “woodblock printed” appearance, like imagery found in Boundary Bay’s classic illustration set.
Drunkin Pumpkin Illustration
The illustration for Drunkin Pumpkin Oat Stout was created with a similar old-timey and cozy feel to the other Barrel Aged bottle artworks. Being the last label to be created, Drunkin Pumpkin was built to meld into the Barrel Aged brand with its woodblock printed illustration style and attention to detail.