Singani 63 | Case Study
In late 2016 I started working with Singani 63, a Bolivian spirit brand being brought to the United States by the prolific director Steven Soderbergh after he fell in love with the drink during his on-location filming of the movie "Che".
The brand came with its challenges, both in that Steven is an artist himself and had some very specific concepts around how he wanted to portray the brand; combining a 1960's esquire-esque style with his non-sequitur humor to be the anti-ad.
Working with this brand demanded a deep understanding of both what the client wants, what is true in terms of emulating a retro style and taking on the tasks the brand faced with respect to educating new potential consumers to help move them continually closer to their goals while improving upon what they had already established.
Steven Soderbergh holding Singani 63
Concept & Process
When presented with a creative request to infuse excitement and energy for the brand amongst a list of some of the top craft cocktail mixologists in the northeast region, I started by dissecting the the elements of what Singani 63 wanted to highlight about the this United States Bartenders Guild event they would be hosting.
Dealing with the same challenges around boiling down the story of this spirit's journey from Bolivia, I felt there was a wealth of narrative to be derived from their original tagline "A Steven Soderbergh Adventure" and explore what a excursion planning table could look like from this top down perspective.
I take great pride in my photo manipulation skills and my resourcefulness to find, in many cases, all of the elements I'll need to create a concept I've dreamt and when I can't find something (like the "Mini Travel Luggage Matchbox" -- seen bottom right of sketch) I make it.
See below for the final product.
Another event related design project required a lot of visual elements in order to imply key points and, in-turn, help to reduce what had started as a very copy-heavy brief.
This was a Cocktail Competition where contestants were asked to create Craft Cocktails that represented films from Steven Soderbergh's legacy. My concept was to layer a perspective from behind his Director's chair (to help amplify the note that he would be one of the Judges at the competition) looking through a film projector & film strip with the Bar in the background as the main stage for the event.
Again, my concept started with an illustration that I would deeply commit to recreating in high fidelity staying as true as I could to the original vision.
See below for the final product.
