A person by the name of Po gave me a call one day requesting my design services for his new whiskey.  It’s a family recipe rice whiskey that’s hand made and bottled … oh, and needs a brand!  This project totally excited me because 1.) I love asian cultures  2.) This guy’s name is Po Lo  3.) And I don’t want to pass up the chance to design a whiskey label.  When I met Mr. Po he had brought in this traditional Hmong flute that he wanted to incorporate into the brand.  I took several pictures of it and took any paper notes and pictures that he had.

I must first link some information about the Hmong (since part of my job is researching)

This was one of the first proofs… needless to say I got waaay ahead of myself.  It was all that stored up energy and excitement to get started I didn’t do enough research.  I meshed in too many different cultures and need to take a breather and actually study what Po gave me.

Some of the next proofs get way better… this was drawn from the referenced photo I took with my phone. Po liked this angle at first but then changed his mind to a “straight-on” angle… it happens to the best of us.  Unfortunately I was hesitant about redrawing the angle so I turned to my friend Photoshop to distort the field of vision.

And this is after photoshop …

On to color and layout…

One of the difficult things about this logo was the balance between the “swirly” pattern and the flute.  Po wanted them as both important elements that stood out.  We finally decided upon the combination of contrast and drop shadow to make it visually stand out.  The solid black was actually the emboss plate.

Here’s the business card…

Thanks Po for letting me work on this project.  I got to taste Yerlo and it is quite good and strong stuff.

I’m also pending a photograph of the actual bottle once the labels are done.

thanks for reading.