CAM’s 1870 Whiskey
The CSU Alumni Association partnered with Ironton Distillery & Crafthouse to create a custom whiskey bottle in time for the Homecoming football game in October 2024. This was an exciting opportunity to partner with an alumni-owned business to offer the first official CSU whiskey – just in time for the heavy traffic that Homecoming and Family Weekend brings to campus.
Learn more about the partnership on Ironton’s website:
This project was on an accelerated 3-week timeline, compared to a usual 2-month project. Ironton was also rebranding in fall of 2024, so our CSUAA bottle had to integrate their new branding.
Multiply stakeholders from different departments within CSU needed prompt input and sign off, including strict college athletic oversight and state liquor board governances. Our team and partners set expectations and stuck to them throughout the process, which helped make it one of the smoothest projects I’ve been a part of!
Collaborative Pinterest moodboard
Samples of new identity courtesy of Ironton
Given the short project timeline, my team and the stakeholders collaborated to curate a moodboard with inspiration pieces from the industry, which gave everyone a feeling of agency to the project and also helped weed out some bad examples as teammates explained their reasoning.
This label would be distributed to liquor stores throughout the state of Colorado, so using overt CSU brand-recognition was paramount. It would need to be as easily recognizable on the Western slope as it was in our backyard of Fort Collins.
We also knew to pay close attention to marrying the two brands of Ironton and CSU, and Ironton helped provide in-progress work on their brand as the two projects were being developed at the same time.
Concept 1
This direction uses a limited two-color palette, primarily using CSU’s brand color gold. It aims for a high-end feeling on the shelf.
This direction utilizes Ironton's pattern in the background, with potential to customize it further with iconic CSU traditions.
The bighorn sheep is temporary stock illustration; if the direction is chosen, I would custom illustrate a Rambouillet instead of a bighorn sheep
Concept 2
This direction uses a wide palette, leaning into CSU’s Find Your Energy secondary brand colors. It aims for a playful feeling on the shelf.
This direction utilizes Ironton's pattern in the background, with potential to customize it further with iconic CSU traditions.
It also directly uses Ironton’s compass container, which is more prominent on their standard spirits.
Concept 3
This direction uses a green color palette, taking from CSU’s brand color Colorado State Green and secondary tones from the Find Your Energy palette. It aims for a nostalgic feeling on the shelf, with a collection of Fort Collins or CSU-specific imagery like Horsetooth Mountain and “The A” that is painted on a hill.
This direction utilizes Ironton's pattern in the background, but would not be customized since the rest of the label is busy enough.
There is a stock art ram cameo above the alcohol content; if the direction is chosen, I would custom illustrate a Rambouillet ram.
Our team and Ironton also collaborated on naming the new whiskey blend. I brainstormed a list, using CSU traditions or wordplay with ram/sheep language. After presenting the concepts above with a few of my personal favorites as placeholder typography, our stakeholders chose favorites in a collaborative meeting.
Our final chosen name: CAM’s 1870
Rambouillet
1870 Whiskey
Trailblazer
The Oval Label
Stalwart Ram
Devil CAM
Claim Shanty
Knights of the Green & Gold
Comatose Kick
Old Main Bell
1884 [for CSUAA est.]
1914 [for first Homecoming]
The A
Ram Reserve
Spruce Hall
Ram Pride
Under the Elms
Kiss of CAM
Black Sheep
Battering Ram
The Shepard
Bellwether
Concept 1 is the winner!
With our stakeholder’s approval of the first direction, I began illustrating a hero ram that more accurately reflected our animal ambassador’s breed, a rambouillet sheep. I initially illustrated in Procreate on the iPad, studying off a photo of CAM. I used the original stock ram illustration as a style guide to help me mimic the woodcut look our stakeholders approved of.
As a left handed person, I prefer illustrating with a stylus, but I did clean up ragged edges and vectorized the piece in Adobe Illustrator.
I also customized Ironton’s pattern with CSU traditions such as The A, Comatose the Cannon, and the Bronze Boot. These were illustrated in the same way as CAM, starting in Procreate and cleaning up in Illustrator.
Final Label
We had a few tweaks to the alcohol content placement and required legal text, and our team wrote a blurb about CSU and the partnership with Ironton. Ironton also requested more from their brand in the label, including blue and some of the font choices.
Ironton handled production of the labels onto their bottles, and marketing materials. Below are a few samples of their work:
