COMPASS DISTILLERS
Compass Distillers crafts their concoctions from a slate tiled turret-like building on Agricola Street in Halifax. The gigantic copper still stands behind a window in their bar, and from there they distill locally grown, often locally foraged, top-tier ingredients into delicious takes on classic spirits with a ton of Compass personality in every drop. I’m passionate about the work I put out, so getting to design and draw for a company with these values is always a recipe for beautiful work.
For Compass Distillers labels, we settled on a concept that puts these high-quality ingredients literally front and centre. These hand drawn illustrations are meant to remind one of observational studies drawn and painted by artists/naturalists in the field. The grain used to distill the base spirit is 100% Nova Scotian grown, and all the botanicals used were foraged in the Nova Scotian wild during the season represented on the label. So paying homage to these ingredients and the environment that play such a huge role in the flavour of each gin was the only right thing to do.
Along with a lineup of incredible spirits, Compass Distillers also puts out a line of ready to drink cocktails and mixology essentials. For these labels, we break away a little from the traditional field studies and create these frames of botanicals that grow around and throughout the text based elements of the label.
In the case of the label for the Absinthe below, there’s a subtle half of a face hidden within the botanical arrangement to vaguely hint at the mysterious reputation of the unique Swiss/French spirit.
As the Compass Distillers lineup grows, so too do the labels! Head to their website, or if you’re local, their bar, and see my drawings and designs adorning their latest offerings.