A new year means new beginnings, perhaps none more welcomed in recent memory than 2021. After the chaos of 2020, you might be looking at ways to celebrate or kick start a new era for your brand. But where to start? Here at Lorpon we prefer a collaborative approach, working with your team directly to fashion something perfect. Whether you’re looking at a limited edition run, using cutting-edge materials or technology, or a complete brand refresh, we can help you find a creative way to ring in the new year.
Let’s start the brainstorm by looking at these three recent case studies.
The Second Wedge Brewing Co.
Operating out of Uxbridge, Ontario, The Second Wedge Brewing Co. produces flavourful ales brimming with character, available in their onsite beer garden or to go, by the can, bottle, or growler. In 2020, the Second Wedge team approached Lorpon to help with the labels for their 5-year anniversary Belgian dubbel, Good Wood. The beer was incredibly complex. Aged for 10 months in oak bourbon barrels, the finished product contained hints of fruit, nuts, cocoa, honey, and wood. The labels needed to communicate that this product was a step-up from your regular brew.
The first thing we did was choose a metallic stock, giving the labels an elevated look that mimics hot foil stamping at a much lower cost – let’s call it faux foil, while allowing the label’s colourful elements to shine through. To ensure the best effect for the contrasting elements, our prepress department created a white ink layer and embedded it directly in the file. The result? Delicious.
Bobcaygeon Brewing Company
Bobcaygeon Brewing Company isn’t in Bobcaygeon—at least not yet. While the owners renovate the old post office in that storied small Ontario town, they’ve already opened their Innovation Lab in Peterborough, where they’re producing their line of fantastic Canadian small batch beers. Bobcaygeon Brewing first approached us to help with a design for their Celestial bourbon barrel-aged stout. They’d looked into putting their design on shrink sleeves but were looking for a more premium finish than a plastic sleeve could provide. Additionally, this was a smaller production run ideally suited to a premium pressure sensitive label.
We met with the designers to discuss adapting the concept to a label, with special attention paid to what could be reasonably accomplished while still achieving the look they wanted. Among the ideas were using glow-in-the-dark ink, custom die lines for the tree line, and secondary packaging. We supplied them with material sample packs to select the stock that would best reflect their design elements and they ultimately chose a beautiful felt wine stock with silver hot foil details for the constellations. During printing, a member of our team noticed that the Bobcaygeon logo colour wasn’t coming across well so we contacted the designer who was able to make an on-the-spot change. The final label is as close as you’ll get to sitting on the dock in lake country and watching the stars.
Collective Arts Brewing
Located in Hamilton, Ontario, Collective Arts Brewing melds the art of beer with the art of, well…art. In addition to putting limited-edition works of art on their beer cans and labels, this brewery also supports local artists and musicians in their community. With this in mind, it’s not surprising their internal creative team is on point, so when they came to us with their 2020 bourbon barrel-aged imperial porter design, we knew our job was to produce the very best label to showcase their art and beer.
The first challenge was that this design was on a clear material which is a concern for ink durability and opacity. With that in mind, we submitted several options including digital print with gloss laminate and metallic silkscreen, flexo print using all UV inks including metallic, and flexo print with metallic silkscreen. Our team strongly preferred the flexo print and metallic silkscreen, a more premium option compared to the metallic UV flexo ink, and Collective Arts concurred. We finished off the label with an anti-scuff gloss varnish.
In each of these three cases, our team collaborated with our clients’ internal teams to produce striking, innovative, and beautiful labels. If you’re looking for a way to celebrate a new beginning at your company, give us a call.