Local Good Friends with Chris Nixon
BACK TO FUN STUFFLocal good friends with Chris Nixon
Chris is a visual artist based in Fremantle, Western Australia who works in everything from graphic design to illustration through to large scale public artwork – and of course one of our #localgoodfriends who designed our core range when we launched into cans, gave our brand a little refresh – also continually creates bespoke artwork for our IPA limited edition series throughout the year and our merchandise.
“I think the history between me and Eagle Bay, well, goes right back to getting married there. We were one of the first weddings, which was really cool. Then we’ve always been going down there and just started getting a connection with Margi and the crew about a couple of designs. It started with some Tote bags and then they thought of me for the core range when they were looking to take the cans forward and this whole level up the brand for the company. Margi, Edge & Astrid said “Look, we want to see what you could do with it.” I got into the core range and just explored that across all of them, which was really cool and it was a pretty fluid process going back and forth. It was good.”
“So, the colors for the brand and each beer were so important for that, and they had a nice clear vision of what they wanted to do, but were also open to options. So it was cool to take inspiration from the coast and then from the land. Each beer would speak to the tasting notes and what that product was reflecting, and then just getting a really clear colour palette that would work across the whole range and have that consistent thread in terms of the tone of the colors.”
“Then we have the lines of the coast coming in and bringing those swell lines in through Eagle Bay, and just some subtle little nods to tell that story to the Eagle picking the fish up out of Eagle Bay, and having that connection to the farm landscape looking towards the coast on the can was important.”
“So, once we finished the core range, we just jumped straight into some opportunities to push it a bit further. It’s actually based on an original design, the concept that I came up with, which is a bit more radical for the core range. And that got them thinking about expressing this across another series like an IPA series, which we are doing and it’s awesome. We just went straight into playing around with a bit more textural patterns, designs, and my concept.”
“ The original plan was to have four in the IPA series. We jumped straight in with a separate one just to see how we would go with a 90-day pilsner, which was really cool. The latest IPA we’ve got is the TDH New England. Really bright and punchy and citrusy and full of flavour, like a big juice bomb. So, I’ve used the compositions driven by EBBC, and so this one is the C, the last one. So I just wanted to take that form. Then everything’s just driven off these big, punchy flavour bursts of citrus and juice… to just make something really punchy to stand out on the shelf.
Our latest limited edition IPA brews featuring Chris’s artwork is our TDH New England IPA and Grapefruit Hazy IPA. Available in-store at our place or delivered to your doorstep via our website or in WA head to your local indie Liquor retailer.
#enjoyeaglebay