Educational Project

Canned the Criminals — Beer Can Design & Ad

Packaging

Motion

Illustrator

Cinema4D

Two beer cans side by side, one blue labeled The Hop Swap Whiskey IPA and one green labeled The Golden Opportunity Golden Ale, each with artistic collage-style designs.
Group of people clinking beer glasses filled with amber beer in a celebration.

The Rundown

This conceptual project aimed to design and promote a new beer series for a local Ottawa brewery. The designs also had to reference a piece of Ottawa and its history or culture. I selected Overflow Brewery as the company to collaborate with due to their namesake and mission. The owners were drawn to the word flow and its association with flowstate and the scientific studies that connect entering flow with profound levels of happiness and joy. In the creation and work of Overflow, founders and employees strive to find their flow.

Motivations

The new can designs and advertisement needed to create a statement piece for Overflow, increasing customer interest around their products from both existing consumers and new customers. This series should serve as a bold exclamation of Overflow's excellence. 

Goals

  • Memorable can designs that stand out on the shelf against competitors
  • Designs that connect with Overflow’s brand and aligns with their values
  • A high impact advertisement to generate interest around the new product 

Responsibilities

I conceptualized, sketched out, and designed this campaign in its entirety. With an interest to explore new mediums of design, I collected elements for the collage design. I entered each stage of the project strategically, thinking of how each piece of the design helped tell the intended story. Bringing the final product into Cinema4D allowed me to enter a flowstate of my own.

Skills

  • Research and Ideation
  • Concept Development
  • Packaging Design
  • Marketing
  • Motion Graphics

Software

  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe After Effects
  • Cinema4D Lite

Project Outcome

These beer can designs were inspired by the flowstate that comes from research rabbit holes. Both cans reference a famous heist in Ottawa, each with descriptions that act as conversation starters, providing opportunity for people to enter their own flow as they research and discuss the can themes. These designs reference a collage style, pulling on clippings from newspapers, magazines, and old catalogs. The vehicles on the Golden Opportunity are actually from a 70s dealership catalog that matches the make and model of a suspected vehicle connected to the criminals. The video advertisement amplifies the heist theme of the can designs and brings in cinematic visuals to unify the series identity.

Overflow Brewing's The HopSwap Whiskey IPA beer can with colorful cut-out style text and hop illustration on dark background.
Can of Overflow Brewing’s The Golden Opportunity Golden Ale with vintage car and police car illustrations on a dark green background.
Two triple sets of craft beer cans, one set labeled The Hopswap Whiskey IPA with dark blue labels, the other The Golden Opportunity Golden Ale with dark green labels.
Can and label of The Hop Swap Whiskey IPA beer with details about the stolen Winston Churchill portrait and beer flavor notes.
The Golden Opportunity Golden Ale beer can design featuring a vintage police car and a red muscle car with smoke, hops, and gold bars on a dark green newspaper background.
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