Alpine Steamhouse

Design / Photography / Web Development

Project Description

Alpine Steamhouse is a fictional craft beer brand I created for multiple school projects while at the Academy of Art University. This is one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on and was a tremendous learning experience for me. Craft beer is one of my passions and I wanted it to show in this project.

My Role

I used everything I know about branding, design, photography, motion graphics and web development and found it incredibly rewarding working on this project. I learned a lot being the only designer and developer working on a big, multi-faceted advertising campaign.

Tools

HTML

CSS

JavaScript/jQuery

Sublime Text

Photoshop

Illustrator

After Effects

Launch Website

jameshellesen.com/steamhouse

Case Study

Problem

Craft beers are currently exploding in popularity and there isn't much love put into many of the art and design of the labels.

Solution

An art direction that matches the handcrafted beauty and passion put into modern craft beer.

Initial Steps

I started a word list and added to it any words that I felt had significant meaning to craft beer and what I'm trying to achieve. The more words the better, having a large selection of quality words that when combined, set a great start to a project that will play a part in every step to come. In this case, I used a word list to come up with the name of the company.

Research & Sketches

I looked at what craft beers are out there. Some breweries are quite small and others huge. It's important to see what the playing field looks like. This step sets a certain high water mark to achieve. Knowing what's out there, I can see who's doing what right and wrong and what I can do to improve where others didn't.

Research & Sketches

Logo Concept

I wanted to show the Alpine Steamhouse in it's environment. The connection between mother nature and our place in the world & universe is important to me. The moon, mountain and steamhouse create a painterly depth not usually seen in beer logos.

I created a custom font for Alpine Steamhouse called Steamhouse Slab. It’s a slab serif that’s designed as a stylized display font for the beer labels, packaging and website. This was the first font I created and I learned a great learning experience in the process of creating a fonts.

This was a big project for me while at the Academy of Art University and spanned multiple classes. I used this project to learn and create things like motion graphics, a custom font and photography to be used in a much larger branding and advertising campaign.

User Experience

Full screen images and videos do a great job of capturing the user’s attention. It’s an almost immersive experience and you get transported to a faraway land somewhere in the cold mountains.

Packaging

The most challenging aspect of this project was the 6 and 12 pack carriers. I deconstructed store bought carriers, measured and created a template for design in Adobe Illustrator. It was a long process of designing, printing, cutting and glueing, refining and repeating but rewarding when it all came together.

The most challenging aspect of this project was the 6 and 12 pack carriers. I deconstructed store bought carriers, measured and created a template for design in Adobe Illustrator. It was a long process of designing, printing, cutting and glueing, refining and repeating but rewarding when it all came together.

Web Development

I designed the Alpine Steamhouse website to be fully responsive and look great on any screen size. I combined all my previous design excises, from creating a brand, and color palette to creating a font to this website. I used all of my skills ranging from motion graphics, custom design, photography and web development to create a rich user experience.