Regionally-sourced ingredients aren’t all it’s going to take to keep a Turner Valley distillery local.
David Farran, owner of Eau Claire Distillery, is now looking to Alberta artists to help design labels for some new spirits – and he’s making it a competition.
“We had been discussing how we’re going to design our next products and we thought everything we do is about Alberta so let’s see if we can make sure there is a good profile of an Alberta artist on the label,” he said. “We would use that on future labels. When you have labels, by virtue of that it goes into some of our marketing materials.”
Farran put the call out to Alberta artists on July 21 to submit portfolios of their work so his staff can get a sense of their style and talent.
“We are looking for somebody who has a style that we think fits with our brand and we may not have seen before and we’re hoping will be something else we can feature that’s very Alberta,” he said. “I hope they submit an electronic version of the kind of artwork they’ve done in the past and a range of things they are capable of it. We are very excited to see what range of styles and talent we get.”
In the past, Eau Claire Distillery used graphic artists to design its labels. Now it’s looking for something original, Farran said.
“We are looking for a range of styles that will inspire us and our customers,” he said. “There is such a wide variety of fantastic artists in the province that use different techniques and different genres and we want to explore all of those and see if we can pick something that really fits with what we want to do and maybe we’ve never seen before.”
Farran said he’s received 20 submissions so far, and expects more before the Aug. 4 deadline.
“I expect from what we’ve seen and the buzz that’s out there that we will get significantly more than that,” he said.
Farran expects it will take two weeks to select a winning artist, who will then be commissioned to do design work with the distillery.
“We will work with them on the kind of thing we want,” he said. “This will be for a few products we have coming in the pipeline.”
For Farran, the contest is all about supporting the local economy.
“I think that everything that we can do to support local Alberta artisans, local Alberta producers, all of that is part of being in our community and that’s part of our ethos,” he said. “We try and choose ingredients as much as possible that come from Alberta. The natural extension of that is to have an Alberta artist that’s part of our marketing program.”
Artists interested in submitting portfolios can do so at www.eauclairedistillery.ca
