INKMILL BREWERY

INSTRUCTOR | CALEB HEISEY

FALL 2023

CRAFTING TATTOO BREW SINCE 2020

This family-owned brewing company was jumpstarted by its very own tattoo shop, which lost business due to the pandemic. The tattoo apprentice at the time wanted to make up for lost time and take his career to the next level. So, being a family of IPA lovers, the idea of merging tattoos and beer was born, leading to what’s now known as Inkmill Brewery.

FULL LABELS

ILLUSTRATED TATTOO ICONOGRAPHY

SKETCH PROCESS

LOGO DEVELOPMENT

The goal was to create a mark that combined both tattoo and beer iconography. I explored multiple iterations of known imagery such as the tattoo gun, ink drips, and beer hops used in the brewing process. In order to deliver a clear and quick read of the overall concept, I decided to focus on the hops as a main image source due to its known presence in beer imagery. Adding an ink drip also allowed the logo to straw away from any type of cliche feel.

PROCESS & TAKEAWAYS

I wanted to implement my inspiration of Sailor Jerry’s traditional tattoo style into all of these illustrations, yet keep the entirety of the actual brand simplistic. I chose an extremely minimal color palette of black and off-white for this reason, and loaded all of the color into the illustrations themselves. Shades of yellow, red, and green were main colors used in the traditional tattoo style, so I stayed in this range for all of the illustrations to make them cohesive.

The illustrations themselves needed to show off both an iconic traditional tattoo design and an element of beer iconography. The IPA illustration, for example, is reminiscent of a commonly seen traditional snake tattoo, and it holds a stalk of barley to showcase that it’s relating to beer as well.