Reflective Practice / Competition Brief for Norman Records

The Brief:

'As you may have guessed from the above, we're not exactly flush with graphic designers here at Norman Towers. And soon we're gonna have a load of unlabelled bottles of American Pale to deal with.

So, we thought we'd hand over the reins of inspiration to you lot.

Fancy designing a label to go on the bottles of beer we're giving away?

The winner will get a £100 voucher, whatever value you attach to the limited exposure the Norman Records brand offers, and, naturally, a crate of Norman Records beer with your lovingly-crafted labels on it.'

Record store Norman Records are running a competition to design the labelling to a small run of American Pale Ale that they are producing / selling. I am a regular at Norman Records so I thought i'd try my hand. 

My first attempt (above) shows the waterline of the beer which also doubles as a soundwave. The colour scheme is pleasing but possibly a bit lacking in personality, as are the flat vector graphics. 

I've since retried the brief and came up with these two designs which I'm much happier with. The 'pale' aspect of the ale is reflected in the light colour scheme, and the tradition of craft beer is hinted at through the use of ld, blackletter type (which i've been looking to use in a modern context for a while).

The swirling pattern in the background is a bit of scanned type and imagery which adds a lot visually and the curves play off nicely against the sharp calligraphic edges of the type.

I liked the aesthetic so I mocked up another similar piece, using the fantastic N from the typeface as the centrepiece. I also pared the wavy lines down and used them horizontally so as to represent a liquid or a soundwave.

I'm not holding my breath about winning, it's just good to do competition briefs and hopefully get some work spread farther afield.