Local brewer Greg “Gonzo” Haner contacted me about designing Gonzo’s Bigg Dogg Brewing’s first canned beverage, the immensely popular and delicious Vanilla Porter. Haner comes from a long career of brew-making and food chemistry, and his reputation as a consummate professional brewer is well known and respected.
This became a larger project, helping Greg to set up the trade dress of his entire line of canned brews to be rolled out in the near future. The first release would set the tone for the other releases in the future, but also needed to differentiate itself from the many, many local beers on the shelves of Michigan, a burgeoning mecca of great local breweries. And the real challenge was to make “vanilla” as hard and tough and metal as the owner. For this project, I looked to great designers and great heavy metal album covers to find my solution.
