As a designer/illustrator and a fan of beer, I've always wanted to try my hand at designing custom artwork for breweries. I know that a lot of the established brands already have in-house designers or designers they are close friends with, so I'm wondering what you guys think would be a good way to "get in on the game" so to speak. I have years of experience as a designer (both web and print) and illustrator and I also design packaging as well so I think I'd be a good fit for a beer label project. It'd be an ideal project for me. Anyone have any tips?
I would suggest approaching breweries in-person with a portfolio of your work in-hand. If your artistic sense resonates with a brewery (certainly those that have yet to go into production), they might very well be receptive to you designing their labels...get yourself out there and promote your craft!
Two thoughts: Take a look at your local bottle shop to see which breweries from your area have crappy labels, then approach them with your portfolio. Keep your ear to the ground by being active in reading local beer newsletters, posts on the BA site for CA, etc. to see which new breweries are getting large enough and are likely to start bottling or canning their beers, then approach them. Or maybe you don't want to wait for them to start to get large, go ahead and approach any new brewery now.
Wouldn't hurt to seek out freelance/cheap work for some homebrewers looking for help branding their own as they grow and adding that to your portfolio so you have specific examples for a more established brewery down the line.
Definitely will be approaching breweries in the near future. I'm trying to build up my portfolio to include at least one beer related project beforehand. I think I'm going to try designing for smaller home brewers for now to start. @BigHornyDevil Unfortunately, I don't know any people in the industry. But my friend visits breweries a lot and I think he's gotten to know some of the workers there. Maybe that can be a start. Cool, thanks for your advice. Yeah, I'm definitely open to this. I think this may be the way to start for now so I can have at least some beer related projects in my portfolio.
Maybe get in touch with Arcade. They have a thing called Public Brew where you can submit artwork and name ideas for their new/upcoming beers.
Not quite sure but southern tier could sure use you! I'd show up with alternate designs to current brews from them. Good luck
I am a designer and illustrator also. I am starting to build my label portfolio simply by creating some labels for my home-brew as examples to start. If you have friends that home-brew, you could approach them for free beer in exchange for design and start getting some work in your portfolio.
Oh man. Im just a hombrewer with that commercial dream. Wish i had my thing going id ask for help such as this.
I've never seen your artwork but it's at least 10 times better than Mikkellers...so you got that going for ya
