Wow, where do I start!

This was a very exciting process and seeing the final product and where it’ll end up makes it worth everything. Starting off with the presentation for The Academy for Sustainble Futures, we generated lots of ideas based on the inspiration of the culture of ale and drinking, it’s history and the part it plays in Canterbury. This is also where we got our colour palette from: traditional colours associated with hops and beer, such as browns, greens, blacks and whites, which I think is a perfect representation due to those colours going extremely well together and helping to keep the imagery alive. Along with the chess piece, the hop vines around it and the single hop coming from the “I’s” in the title of our mock-up, I think that we achieved a design that embodied the traditional but modern theme that perfectly ties in drinking culture and Canterbury.

We had the help of so many people when it came to make it come to life; one of the first things we did was take a look at one of the hops gardens on campus to get some more information on how they’re harvested and where it all starts. We then started to think about how we would have our bottles looking. It took lots of tweaking and changing things up but in the end, we came to a decision that everyone agreed on and was in favour of, making sure that the main goals were for it to stand out and still be readable as we really wanted our name and message to shine.

We had an amazing opportunity to be able to visit the brewery that produces the ale for the university, The Foundry Brewers and Distillers, and get more of an insight on what needs to be done and what the process of ale-making is. It was really impressive to know that come September, our own ale would be joining those in the brewery, and it’s safe to say we’re all excited about it! Looking at a lot of previous designs also gave us a lot to think about and definitely gave us the urge to want to stand out from the others, not just in terms of the design but also the story too; as our name is ‘’Bishop’s Blessing’’, we want to bring across that this ale is a gift from God.

The experience was extremely informative and gave me lots of insight. I have expanded my knowledge on ale-making and my campaigning skills and tactics. Designing posters for the upcoming official launch of the ale made things feel even more real, like it was actually happening!

Bishop’s Blessing is now available to purchase in the Anselm Food Court!

By Sainabou Mbye, second year PR and Media student