Wedding Kettle-Package Design

​It’s day six of not leaving the apartment for anything but a run or walk. Thank goodness for sunny days and Zoom.

​

Announcing the second brewski in this packaging project of mine - Wedding Kettle Raspberry Saison. As the story goes, Moses Hazen and his men left a cooking kettle behind on the Bayley Hazen road after they took over the construction of the road. The kettle was found by a man named John Damon, who later gave the kettle to Ames Walbridge as a wedding gift. My source for this tale and others about the Bayley Hazen road is a very interesting North Star Monthly article. Yay small town papers! 

I knew that I wanted to incorporate a 1700s/early 1800s couple into the design, as well as an old cooking kettle. I had some fun researching 1700s to early 1800s wedding dresses, and I chose the one that stood out to me most, a dress worn by Sarah Tyng Smith in 1763, to be my main inspiration. A little before this story on our timeline… but still in keeping with the general style of early 1800s wedding dresses. The man’s clothing is colonial, my main inspiration being drawn from line drawings. The kettle is a cooking kettle, not to be confused with a tea kettle. 

​I used a dark fuschia as the color for this product, which builds anticipation for the juicy, fruity saison inside. It was fun to create a wedding themed play on words while writing the drink description copy.  I played around with a few designs.

​I was feeling that the balance was off with the couple and the kettle competing with the text for attention. The design lacked flow, and I wanted the white space to match the Mile 73 design more closely for a strong overall packaging unit.  I tried another approach, adding a veil to the kettle and moving the couple to the back of the can for my final design. The kettle dancing down the road in a wedding veil added a zany, whimsical element that is fitting for beer packaging. 

​Another quarantine project complete! Now to gather up the nerve to brave the grocery store…