I’ve realized over the previous year that I haven’t really posted many blog entries about the design I do for Flying Dog Brewery. So hopefully as I do some cool projects, I’ll be posting about them from time to time.

We launched a new(ish) website last week. The short story about why it’s newish is that we didn’t have a large budget for the project to do a complete website overhaul. Our previous website, while serviceable, was dated. So we kept most of the content as is, but redesigned all the style sheets to create a website that essentially looked like we made a brand new website.

Part of the updating was to factor in our social media activation (Twitter, blogging, flickr) to allow for our consumers to have a centralized place where they could quickly figure out what we’ve been up to. The result is a better organized, better looking, better performing website.

We couldn’t have done it without the talent of Jeremy Bamford and Flatirons Internet. Flatirons was responsible for coding the site, and in a very timely manner.

There are still some kinks to work out, but websites being what they are, are always a work in progress. I’m pretty happy with the result, what do you think?

I wrote another blog entry for the increasingly popular Denver advertising/marketing/pr/design blog The Denver Egotist about Gonzo Imperial Porter and the new Hunter S. Thompson documentary.

I saw the documentary last night, and aside from a few bad bluescreening moments, it’s spectacular. People interviewed for the film include Juan Thompson (Hunter’s son), Jimmy Carter, George Stranahan (Flying Dog’s main owner), Pat Buchanan, and a bunch of other people.

Here’s the beginning, but you’ll have to clik the link above to read it all:

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .“And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.”

The above quote is the opening to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and in my mind one of the greatest introductory paragraphs to any piece of writing. It’s all about Hunter’s pursuit of the American Dream, whatever that is. And today is Hunter S. Thompson’s birthday, and what better way to honor his life than by writing about the beer that was inspired by him directly?

I’m pleased to let my readers know that our updated labels for Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale have started rolling off the bottling line here in Denver. Today I took photographs of the aforementioned bottles. And they’re turning out pretty decently. I’m going to add some sweat to these images, hopefully. Fake sweat, even! But I’m finally satisfied with these bottle shots. The first gazillion were less than I had hoped for, and the faked bottle shots just don’t compare. But it’s coming along, and every time I take photos of stuff like this, I think the results get better and better. Not bad for a setup under $100. The key is to use compact fluorescent bulbs, they’re not hot and they’re super white. I love that I barely have to color correct these at all.

I also took photos of our Wild Dog Barrel-Aged Horn Dog Barley Wine. So rare, there are only about 700 bottles known to exist in the world. I just think that makes it sound super rare, therefore adding to the mystique of this limited-batch product.

We’ve got quite a bunch of other labels on bottles now, actually. Old Scratch Amber Lager, Gonzo Imperial Porter, and Snake Dog India Pale Ale (among others) have already run. Look for other bottle shots to come up periodically, along with selected 6-packs. Below is my silly little setup.

The light tent is ok, but I need to find a better solution for the panel where the lens pokes through. The slice in that panel is too tall, and you can see it in the reflection on the bottle. I’m wondering if the fake sweat will help diffuse this situation. I’ve got some ideas in mind, some that even include some sort of spandex-like material, but we’ll see what happens. I also would really like to get some sort of wide angle lens so that I might be able to fit some larger things into the aforementioned light tent.

[edited: I've replaced my original version with a version with some sweat. It looks way cooler.]

I’m in charge of the video/photo/blogging/twitter for Flying Dog during the Great American Beer Festival. Here’s the first video I made, with hopefully another to come tonight.

Click To Play

I’m also photoblogging at Flying Dog’s Flickr site.