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When they came to me, Spicy Water Distillery was a brand new business. It was a distillery that didn't even have a distillers' license, yet. It was a dream. A glint in the corner of owner Barry's eye. He was FULL of ideas and big dreams and I was all in. In our discovery call, the words Barry used to describe his dream brand were "steampunk beach". Which is.... WILD. And not actually a thing.
But I sat there and I thought... what is he actually saying… behind the words? Because that's the real job. That's what empathetic brand building IS. Figuring out what's motivating the thought and the emotion and what exists in between the words a client is saying to me. Steampunk beach isn’t a thing. Steampunk is mechanical and leather and intricate old-timey clockwork. Beach is… beach. But behind and inside of those words, Barry was communicating an energy. An excitement. An edgy warmth.
So, with that in mind, I looked to the name that Barry had picked for his dream distillery: "Spicy Water". Which I loved because it A. referenced the fact that he was distilling "fire water" and B. brought to mind The Standells and their local icon of a song (though we could change up the lyrics a little: "Love that Spicy Water. Aaaa Millbury you're my home.")
From there I designed a brand that is SUPER dynamic and EXTREMELY cool. I went in to visit after they had opened their tasting room and, without knowing who I was, the man beside me at the counter said “I parked and came in because the sign outside is so cool.” I could have DIED. Literal brand designer’s dream.
A few things to notice as you’re looking through the artwork below:
When Barry first said "Steampunk beach" I really tried to wrap my head around it. And I found a way to make it work!! I found some metal palm tree tiki torches and came up with the idea of outdoor events with food trucks and a steel drum band. I told Barry we could set up the tasting room with all kinds of fun, adventurous easter-eggs where people could find pirates treasure and scan a QR code to unlock a special kind of shot at the bar. We could make it work... for the tasting room. But Spicy Water Distillery doesn't just exist in the tasting room. the brand needed to stand out (for the RIGHT reasons) on liquour store shelves surrounded by other, less confusingly branded, bottles.
There are a LOT of variations available in the logo. I wanted Barry to be able to put this logo EVERYWHERE. On shot glasses, on shirts and hats, on banners and signs and bottles, on coasters and just... everything!!! And the intricacy and all the layers in the primary logo (the first one you'll see below) could make that hard without the variations. Different layouts, different sizes, different colors, but ALL on brand and ALL clearly connected. If you scrolled quickly through the images below, you might not even notice that you're looking at some pretty significantly different logo files. Which is the point.
The flame inside of that fiery shotglass is doing a really important job. First off, of course, it's warming things up and making the logo SUPER eye catching. But more importantly, it's creating a REALLY cool opportunity inside of the brand design. Knowing that Spicy Water would be distilling several different kinds of alcohol, I created that color gradient inside of the flame to give them the palette to color code those bottles. Red for bourbon, yellow for vodka, orange for rum, green for whiskey, and turquoise for agave. All that meaning and purpose (and practicality) AND I organized the colors in the flame so that it's accurate to the colors in real flame. HOW COOL!! Check out the inspiration for the bottle design, below. It's awesome.
