Alongside the rising wave of craft breweries across the United States, competition in retail has caused a dramatic shift toward investing in innovative packaging design for the beer label industry. Some ramifications include the historically significant Milton Glaser bluntly critiquing modern label design last year, but from the beer industry’s standpoint, embracing renowned designers and talented illustrators has become a new radical way to diversify the beer shelf. Contrary to Glaser’s thesis,

Branding. The ‘it’ word of today. Branding means creating a cohesive message and experience across your brand, no matter where the customer meets your company. From your visual brand identity (think ‘logo’) to your website, social media, print and advertising, merchandise and signage, it should all deliver a consistent experience.

Watermark can start with a brand at any point. We can start from scratch or we can start in the middle, where a business already has an identity but no marketing collateral.

Your designer may spit out abbreviations like they are going out of style, so we are here to help you understand what they are talking about and how it relates to your project! Below are some commonly used color and file formats that you may hear when speaking with your design firm or printer.

COLOR

PMS :
This is an abbreviation for the Pantone Matching System. If there is a color you just have to nail,

Holiday Cards are a wonderful opportunity to cut loose, be playful, or in this case – be very detailed! This year our holiday card featured the Watermark Design logo surrounded by a winter wonderland. From a tiny doe to a barn swallow in flight, each detail was hand-illustrated meticulously, then scanned and laid out to create a classic holiday scene and mood.

Picking the Printing Process
We knew that we needed to find a way to bring out the details in the card,

Starting up a brewery? With the skyrocketing number of microbreweries opening in the U.S. (according to the Brewer’s Association, as of 2013 a whopping 1,400 span across the United States, breaking down into approximately 1.5 opening every day), there is a lot of competition on the shelf. It is important to define who you are through your branding. A brand encompasses everything you are, from your story,