1920: Prohibition Product Design

Project Brief

OVERVIEW:
In 1919, America enacted National Prohibition which later went into effect on January 17th, 1920, with the passage of the 18th Amendment- which banned the manufacturing, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition was extremely difficult on thousands of American breweries, vineyards, and distilleries. Some continued work during prohibition by producing medicinal liquors, some used their facilities to develop non-liquor goods, but many closed their doors for good. 

STUDENT'S PROMPT:
This year (2020), marked the 100-year anniversary of the passing of Prohibition, and in its honor students are tasked in creating the branding and packaging for a fictional American brewery, winery, or distillery. Extra credit will be given if the student redesigns an existing business that had been lost to prohibition. 

Deliverables for the project will include the business's logo, and two labels for a "everyday" and "premier" product, and the packaging to house the premier product. When designing, attention must be given to all information required by law to be printed on liquor labels. 

Learning Objectives

Over the next five-weeks, students will research the process of how their liquor is produced, understand what information is required on their designs, explore and experiment with various methods, die-cuts, and materials for two labels and a packaging to house the premier liquor. 

Deliverables

Students will submit the physical products and packaging for grade. Students will also need to upload their project, process, style guide, and photographs of their final products to Behance. 

Reflections

This project was assigned in the Spring semester of 2020 to our senior-level Capstone students for the 100-year anniversary of Prohibition. Most of my courses are produced and delivered digitally, and this assignment allowed students to interact with physical products. Most students decided to create a fictional branding, but several found existing businesses and interesting facts about pre-prohibition liquor production. 

I will again be assigning this course in the upcoming 2021 Spring semester, but limiting what they can design for to whiskey and wine products as it was too difficult to design beer labels without resorting to mockups.