green lady

Finally! I've been working on the beer label design for the Green Lady Brewery Company. As the brewery-cum-wineshop is housed in a pretty impressive art deco building, I wanted the label to reference that a little, while still being modern.

So, for inspirado, I turned to the books of Vogue covers and 1920s fashion illustration I bought when I was, gosh, 15! I looked at these so often as a teenager, even decades later I still know nearly all the illustrations by heart.

Just to mix it up, and because I thought the green lady - a ghost who supposedly haunts the brewery of Dunnottar Castle - should be slightly more ethereal than a 1920s flapper, I channeled another of my teenage obsessions in the form of some Alfons Mucha style art nouveau.

(As an aside, it would seem nearly all Scottish castles are haunted by a green lady, so make of that what you will!).

Here's first look at the initial visuals. To keep it current and add shelf impact, I've added a slightly irreverent bottle of beer (a nod to the ubiquitous flapper cigarettes which were obviously Vogue illustrator shorthand for an emancipated lady!) and rendered the illustration in a flat, solid colour graphic style (flat design is everywhere at the moment).

Still some fairly major tweaking of layout and typography to do, and that's assuming the Green Lady Brewing Co. are even happy with the direction the artwork is taking, but I'm pleased with how the visuals have turned out so far...