Beer Badges: Designing for Oval Brewing Company

I started up a part-time job this year with Battinelli Photo and Design. It a small business in my town run by a great photographer that had taken on some graphic design work and needed some help, so I was happy to come on board to assist.

This was my first big task for him. Oval Brewing Company, based right here in Plattsburgh, NY, came to us a few times needing small logos called “badges” to represent new beers they had created. They were small, simple images that would be put on each label for each specific brew. They had several already, so it was my job to come up with a few new designs that matched the style of these pre-existing ones.

Some examples of pre-existing badges. I would have to match their style with my new ones.

My first job was a badge for a light IPA. In my first meeting with the boss, he mentioned “maybe a hop light bulb or something...” and I really liked that idea. I ran with it and designed this badge first. Thankfully, the boss loved it too.

My first try at the ‘Light’ badge, literally making a hop light. 

We went through a few iterations of different bulb ends, with glow lines and without, changing the light/dark relationship, until we got here.

Here We had decided to make it dark for more impact. The boss really wanted to see some bulb threads, but it never looked right to me.

I really liked the visible filament inside, but the client opted for their current hop logo in place of my hop, so it had to go. This version is the one they went ahead with.

Finished ‘Oval Light’ logo as it appears on their website.

Next up, the client needed a badge for a sour IPA. This one seemed pretty vague at first. Like...how do you represent the concept of sour? I started to fall back on packaging for sour candy, with lots of pop and explosion imagery. My best early idea was an atomic explosion in a beer glass. But before I worked on this too long, I was told the client had mentioned wanting something more psychedelic, like swirls and bubbles. I could work with that.

I first tried working directly in Illustrator, but trying to freehand organic shapes directly in the program with a mouse was too difficult. I had to revert to pencil and paper to work out a starting place, which worked great! A few sketches later I had zeroed in on something I liked: a black and white swirling beer glass with an explosively foaming head.

Where it started. Never doubt the power of a plain envelope and a stubby pencil.

I quickly translated this over to Illustrator and had a design ready for the client. And the best part, he loved it! It went ahead exactly as I had designed it.

Finished ‘Sour IPA’ badge, as it was approved and published.

The last example today was for a new brew called “Mind Games”, a maple beer that starts off tasting way too sweet but ends with a mellow finish. I loved working on this one, my mind swirling with all the imagery I could pull from. I had a few ideas, like a maple leaf puzzle, maybe a maple leaf maze, but the one I really liked was a head silhouette with an interabang. It just seemed like such a succinct and eye-catching image to depict the drinker’s experience.

My personal favorite badge for ‘Mind Games’. It ultimately went unused.

I put a lot of time into this little guy, but the client was looking for something else that emphasized the maple flavor. My boss came up with a brain exploding maple leaves, which the client much preferred. The last change the client wanted was to have the brain in a profile view, which I helped with. This was the final version that was incorporated onto printed cans.

Final ‘Brain Games’ logo

So there it is. Some designs start fully formed, some designs take work shopping to get just right, and all of it was a lot of fun. I’ll be sure to include another post if I ever get to do more design work for them.

And be sure to check out Oval Brewing Company. It’s a small, independently run brewery right here in upstate New York. Check out their website here, and visit their location if you ever have the chance.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time!