Matt Vergotis Having designed 11 different and very unique brand identities in the Craft Beer space, I have leaned on my typographic and calligraphy/ lettering skills to individualise each identity. There’s a story to tell about every one of them and how, through the use of letterforms, I’ve been able to capture the essence of their brand. There’s also a story to be told about my obsession in having everything that appears on the can to be designed by me, which led me to creating supporting fonts for some of those breweries. There are 11th-hour nightmare complete redesigns, failures, and home run successes of all my concepts that make for interesting anecdotal stories that other designers will be able to identify with when working with clients.
There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to the process behind creating the logos, which all start off as pencil-to-paper concepts. They then evolve from calligraphy to lettering and then the final OCD stage of vectoring. I will also discuss how designing a logotype for a beer can has to be reverse-engineered with a vision for how the completed can will look before even thinking about how the logo will look. There are also hundreds of unique limited-release beer can designs that have a more expressive feel to them that are one-offs where I can get more loose with my calligraphy and lettering. In a nutshell, my love of calligraphy, lettering, and crafting letterforms has helped me shape the look and feel for the craft beer industry.