Blackberry Farm Brewery

Blackberry Farm, an iconic, luxury retreat in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, does everything to the highest degree of excellence possible. It’s no surprise that when they decided to open an on-site brewery they looked to achieve that same excellence. We were brought in to refresh the brand and packaging, focusing on the core attributes of the resort, as well as the brewery itself. The crux of these helped form the tagline and basis for the design: “Farm Roots Run Deep”. We approached the design looking to create a look and feel that was fresh, modern, and still held onto the roots of the country retreat. The result is iconic barn-quilt inspired graphics, clean white cans, and luxury feeling gold tops and typography.

Farm Roots Run Deep.

Blackberry Farm, an iconic, luxury retreat in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, does everything to the highest degree of excellence possible. It’s no surprise that when they decided to open an on-site brewery they looked to achieve that same excellence. We were brought in to refresh the brand and packaging, focusing on the core attributes of the resort, as well as the brewery itself. The crux of these helped form the tagline and basis for the design: “Farm Roots Run Deep”. We approached the design looking to create a look and feel that was fresh, modern, and still held onto the roots of the country retreat. The result is iconic barn-quilt inspired graphics, clean white cans, and luxury feeling gold tops and typography.

This work was honored by Communication Arts with the 2019 Award of Excellence.

Studio: Helms Workshop | Creative Direction: Christian Helms

 
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Inspiration

As we began the ideation process for this rebrand, Christian and I settled on two visual languages we wanted explore, with the primary (and our favorite) one being inspired by barn quilts. Because of the close tie of Blackberry Farm Brewery to its namesake and parent property Blackberry Farm, we thought leaning into the heritage and visual language of the area would help us root the brand in an authentic way. Making sure we found a perfect balance of luxury, modern sensibility, and authenticity was the key to creating a brand system that felt at home at the farm, as well as a high-end restaurant. The end result is a beautiful marriage of those attributes in a system that is both simple and easily scaled.

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Design System

We typically approach a packaging project by focusing on the most consumer facing facet of the business, which for a brewery, are its cans and bottles. Using barn quilts as the inspiration we sat about using design as a solution to a common problem: How do you create consistency while making sure that there is differentiation between products and they all work with a singular design system? We solved this in two ways. We kept the can design clean, luxurious, and modern, and used varying quilt patterns and color ways to build a consistent brand while remaining flexible and scalable.

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Designer and Design Director, Deep in the Heart of Texas.