My friends Chris Cuzme and Mary Izett started a great brewing collaboration years ago but this year they made an official business venture with Cuzett Libations. We got drinks at Threes Brewing to talk about original direction which was pretty wide open. Chris wanted to do something text based and Mary was thinking something with an icon of some sort. We got drinks again at Jimmy's No. 43 and I proposed we do their brand in an art deco style as there isn't a brand in the NY market that was doing something in that style. They were both were very enthusiastic about it which made me happy as I had wanted to do some art deco for quite some time. They are both huge fans of art deco as well. Fun facts: Mary's favorite building is the Chrysler and Chris is a huge fan of Conn 10M ladyface saxophones. (Look em' up they're gah-jess!) Below are some of the first round logos.
These are the tap stickers I made for their first beer Cuzett Grisette. A grisette or "grey beer" isn't grey at all. It's a low abv farmhouse ale that was originally brewed for miners. After a long hard day, they would come up out of the Earth and women would have platters full of these beers. This one is perfect for all you miners our there or if you just want some great easy drinking delicious beer on a hot day.
This came out of one of Chris's trips to Australia. He wanted to do a beer that really spoke of some of Australia's history. This was based off of the Great Emu War of 1932 which was a real thing. The Australian government started a war against the emus because they were destroying farmers land. The government lost the war obviously as we still have emus. The drawing I did was based off the Velociraptor from the original Jurassic Park which only took an hour and half. The text on the other hand took hours and hours to perfect. The poster had been finished but I wasn't thrilled with the "NOW ON DRAUGHT" but had a great idea one night while nodding off. The line going in and out of the lettering just did some great stuff for me visually. It also made the whole poster interesting to look at not just something tacked on. Below are some sketches of emus that didn't make it. My original idea was to have a WWI era helmet on the bird and then the idea was to make the head actually be Australia. It just didn't turn out well as you can see below. And below that are the stickers I made as well.
Cuzett Grisette on tap at Brouwerij Lane represented nicely before I made any stickers for use.
