On 16th March 2020, four days before national lockdown, I was commissioned by Derek McGrath in Dynamo to develop the branding and packaging for a new range of ‘summer’ beers for the Galway Hooker Brewery.

Originally called project castaway, this range had to imbue the visual language of Davy Jones locker – a world of pirates, ghost ships and unseemly creatures lurking in the depths of the sea.

I researched competitors and explored the world intended for the visual brand language before settling on the idea of using the Kraken – an octopus of mammoth proportions.

Given some flexibility with the representation of the Galway Hooker brand I developed a ribbon style for both the branding and product name to act as a visual container for the illustration and flavour variants. This, combined with flavour colours that ‘popped’ set the template for all the other variants within the range.