We’ve been working with Darwin Brewing Co. since the beginning. Originally based in Sarasota, they moved their brewing operation to Bradenton in 2013. Over the years the brewery has become a staple in the Florida craft beer culture. At the start of 2021, the new DBC sales director, Luke, engaged Creative Sarasota to help redesign and reinforce the Darwin brand with a new website and brand overhaul.
Objectives & Challenges
Being a beer lover, this was a fun project. Once you have quality photographs of beer pints, you have a lot of graphic material to work with on website design. From a design and layout point of view, there weren’t a lot of challenges.
The redesign of product labeling certainly presented its obstacles. But we were able to maintain each product’s identity and highlight the Darwin’s parent brand.
Chief among the objectives was to make the website visitor feel like they could taste craft beers on the screen. This is done with proper photography.
We also needed to provide an easy way for the DBC team to inform visitors of events and special information. We used different feeds to accomplish this.
It was also important to alert visitors to the ways to order brews for pickup.
Objectives
- Product labeling redesign.
- Custom studio and location photography.
- Photo rich website design.
- Hightlight To-Go orders on website.
- Highlight events on web site.
- Modern web layout to accomodate mobile devices.
- Website age gate.
Project Components & Highlights
for Darwin Brewing Co.
Custom Location and Studio Photography
There are several reasons we wanted high quality, custom photography for Darwin craft brewery and taproom. First, beer brewers and lovers alike spend a ridiculous amount of time holding glasses of beer up to the light. This, I imagine, allows them to see color, sediment, head, carbonation, thickness, and other such characteristics of the beer. This type of product photography attempts to reproduce that feeling of gazing in to the deep body of a freshly poured brew.
Another obvious element of the product photography is simple brand and package recognition. Photographing the beer package next to a glass of the poured brew gives the viewer all of the visual triggers they need to recognize the product: product name, colors, packaging/labeling, logo brand, etc.
Finally, Darwin Brewery is also a taproom (basically, a beer bar). As with many craft brewery taprooms, Darwin’s has a clean yet very laid back atmosphere. They cater to an engaged clientelle who appreciate drinking finely crafted beers in an inviting and friendly environment. Our photography accurately presents that atmosphere to the website viewer.
Highlight Ordering Channels
Darwin Brewing Co. also wanted to highlight their Brews To Go ordering. Offering several different portable packages including the refillable Crowlers, the brewery decided to sidestep the complications and complexities of a traditional ecommerce store. Instead, they tapped in to (pun intended) the ever-growing mobile and social cultures. Creative Sarasota built an interactive, global footer section that always presents the different portable products (6 packs, Crowlers, & Kegs) and 3 different ways to order. From a mobile phone, a customer can order by tapping one of 3 buttons: a phone call button; they can tap a Facebook button and make a request on the company’s FB page; they tap the email button. The taproom will fulfill the order and have it ready for pickup.
Facebook Feed
The taproom regularly has events including markets, music, and beer tastings, but not enough events to really justify a full calender software. As such, we simply built in a Facebook feed from Darwin’s fan page. Now, all they have to do is post events on their FB page and they get 2 hits for one action.
Branding Consistency
Creative Sarasota’s own Max Kelly designed the Darwin Brewing Co. logo years ago. He also did much of the original labeling. Over the years, the company engaged several different designers for different product collateral. While these artists were talented in their own right, this diversity of creatives lent itself to an inconsistency of branding across different products. To remedy this, Creative Sarasota (Max) redesigned much of the company’s labeling and packaging. These new designs were intended to maintain each product’s unique identity while reinforcing the overarching Darwin brand identity.
Tasteful & Playful Animations
A common trope in the world of alcohol is the classic act of sliding a beer across a bar top to the waiting hand of the inteded recipient. We wanted to have a little fun with that idea. So, in 2 spots on the site we created a little animation approximating that trope. An isolated image of a pint of beer slides across the backdrop of a surface in the Darwin taproom.
Here are a few shots from the Darwing Brewing Co. photo shoot.
