Brewing the Identity

Good design doesn’t just label a product, it tells you where it came from. Campus Craft started with a real brief: to design a beer label for a student-brewed pilsner.

But the goal wasn’t just to create packaging, it was a call to represent a place, a program, and the people behind it. All on one can.

Understanding the Landscape

Before designing anything, I needed to understand three things:

The product - a student-crafted pilsner
The audience - local Tampa Bay consumers + craft beer drinkers
The competition - regional breweries already doing this well

Research showed a clear direction. Craft beer, especially pilsners, lean illustrative, expressive, and story-driven with both their labels and boxes. Less corporate and more human.

The Concept

Instead of treating the can like a label, I wanted to treat it like a timeline. The design follows a Brewing Arts student through the full process of brewing beer. From walking through St. Pete, to getting to campus, to learning, and finally, to brewing the beer itself! Layered into that story are landmarks that ground it in place, like the Skyway Bridge, the Pier, and the USF St. Petersburg campus.

Design Execution

Every element was intentional.

The illustrative storytelling across the full wrap
The integration of required brand elements (both for USF and the brewery)
The production-ready layout including barcode, QR code, and nutrition panel
Multiple supporting assets built to extend the system across platforms

This wasn’t just a beer label wrap design, it was a system designed to live and work in the real world of consumers.

The Takeaway

Campus Craft is a balance of strategy and expression. Understanding the audience, respecting the brand, and then pushing it just enough to make it memorable and sought after.

It’s design that works.