Production Stories : Villages Brewery Beer Can Artwork commission

Villages Brewery commissioned Georgia to design their 8th birthday beer can artwork. Here, we show some behind-the-scenes images from the design process and an insight into creating the colourful and bold design.

If you’d like to see some of the works in progress in the flesh, they will be on show at Villages Taproom from 27th November 2024.

Like all things in the studio, the process started with a  drawing (or two). For this project I looked at drawings that I had made over the summer of a visit to the historic Italain city of Bergamo. Layers of patterns through arches and intricately carved churches were a goldmine of pattern ideas and I quickly moved onto converting some of the more interesting areas into print.

The project moved away from the drawing board and onto the print table, where Georgia experimented with printing the design concepts onto handmade paper and heavy-weight linen. We wanted the finished label to feel hand made and have the hand of the maker still visible across the hundreds of cans.

The colour palette was fairly broad at the start of the project however we slowly narrowed it down to a rich and vibrant series of hot spicy colours to warm us up on the darker days ahead.

A wall of ideas, none of these made the cut but that doesn’t mean they won’t appear somewhere in the future!

A more edited wall of ideas: We had three labels to choose from in the end, and we settled on the diamond pattern as it highlighted the brand logos really well but still showcased a new style for the brewery.

The final roll of labels before they made it onto the cans.

The finished thing! You can get your hands on a can or pint (if you’re brave enough for a pint of 8% beer!) at Villages Taproom from Friday 8th November 2024.