2024 Interrupt’s
Fearless Spirit
Every year, Interrupt partners with Toledo Spirits to create a custom spirit to gift to our clients. The team is hand selected each year. For 2024, I was selected as the lead designer on the project. During this time, I collaborated with my creative director and copywriters to concept an overall theme. During the kick off, all we were told was the spirit was going to be a Kentucky Honey Bourbon. It was then up to us to determine the rest.
Beekeeper Bourbon
After brainstorming many different concepts, we decided to lean into the bee and honey aspect of the spirit and name this Beekeeper Bourbon. Each year, we like our spirit to come with a story. We thought about how could we connect this back to the agency? When we thought about the beekeeper, it was simple. Metaphorically, our agency is the hive and we, the employees, are the bees. We’re all working towards a similar goal while the beekeeper, our leaders, are what guides chaos and control.
While thinking about how I could visually represent this story, I wanted to create an experience when the person receives this. Similar to the bee boxes, the top slides open to reveal the combs and the honey. The label is done asymmetrically to mimic a real honey comb. To really give a nod to the handcrafted element of this spirit, I created custom hand lettering for the label that’s finished in gold and included hand drawn charcoal bees scanned onto the label. Fun fact, there’s a bee that represents each employee.
Beekeeper Photography
We partnered with a local bee farm for the honey. We wanted to showcase this on our landing page to really help tell the story of the beekeeper. Despite my fear of bees, I put on a suit and got out there to shoot these photos. I wanted to capture the process from start to finish. Once I was done shooting, I created custom presets in Lightroom to have a similar look and feel to the Fearless Spirit aesthetic, which were neutral and warm tones.
Landing Page Development
After everything is done, we then create a landing page to send recipients to read about the whole Fearless Spirit story. We show case photography of the bottle, inspiration, highlighting graphic elements, anything to help visually tell the story. I created graphic elements for the page to help visually communicate the story in a clear way, while adding extras that don’t come in the box such as drink recipes.