Thursday, June 3, 2010

Low Country Gold

I'm on a BBQ competition team and every now and than I get to do some design work for it. Recently we decided to custom label a sauce and I designed the label. Projects like this are great, as I love both design and BBQ and can do my own thing. Ultimately the owner of the team has sign off so I do have to make sure my design fits his vision.


Once we decided to label a sauce we had to come up with a name. We had chosen a mustard style sauce that fit well with the low country style of the Carolinas BBQ. We suggested names to each other as we brain stormed some were decent, Carolina Gold, some not so much, Butt Juice. We finally settled on Catchafire for Q Low Country Gold.


The name sounded good and I figured the hard part was done. I was wrong.


As I approached this design I wanted it to be specific for the product but generic enough to use the design with other possible BBQ sauces, rubs and hot sauces. I also wanted the design to stand out among other sauces. Many sauces have a similar look to the label design so they don't differentiate themselves when sitting on a shelf. Buyers shop with their eyes first.


So I turned to my sketch book. I find I have better results if I work in analog before I go digital for this type of work. I also find I am working through various designs in my head too. During this project I had a brilliant idea for the label when I woke one morning. I sketched it out and then created on the computer. It didn't translate well for the look I wanted.



After a couple more days of sketching and letting the ideas percolate, it hit me. I did rough sketch of my idea so I wouldn't forget it and when I had time later I created it in the computer. At first it wasn't working for me but after looking at it and tweaking it here and there it started to coleus into what my vision was.


You may purchase a bottle of it over at the Catchafire for Q web site

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