Brews, briefs, brands and beer

Mike Stringer and Eduard Briem are the co-owners of League of Brewers, a new company producing a range of products and services for home brewers. In need of brand development work within a short space of time, they turned to their mate Klaasz Breukel, who teaches graphic design at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT), for advice. Klaasz suggested getting some of the graphic design students to work on the brief - an idea that they agreed with straight away.

"We knew it was going to be very challenging with the time frames we had and also our business of brewing which was an area the students weren’t really familiar with - however we were very keen to work with a local designer and realised this would be a great experience for us and the NMIT students".

The students were supplied with a written brief and had a question and answer session with the owners. They were given just one week to come up with brand ideas which were then presented to League of Brewers.

"The level of interest and enthusiasm was very positive and the ideas were very strong", says Stringer. "We were very impressed with the range of ideas and selecting a final winner was definitely not easy. However eventually we settled on the designs put forward by Jessica Harrison.

"Her suggestions hit the brief exactly, and it was immediately clear that she had put in a lot of time and produced something highly original, professional, and consistent with what we both wanted to represent our business."

Harrison's design was tweaked and has now been printed onto t-shirts to be sold at Marchfest. She received free tickets to Marchfest, printed merchandise for her portfolio and may also have the opportunity to do further paid design work with the company in future.

Harrison, who is in her final year of the Bachelor of Arts and Media, says working on the project was a great experience.

"I really embraced the opportunity to work with clients on a real brief to enhance my design and communication skills. 

"I start my projects with hours of research, then sketching, analysing and refining. The final inspiration for this design to represent the League came from the idea of humanising the mash-paddle, which is a unique piece of equipment for the craft of brewing beer".