Hand-carved lino print label designs for Balance Brewing — Headless Horseman, Old Crockern, and Mermaid — photographed across Greater Manchester locations
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BALANCE BREWING & BLENDING

Brand Identity · Lino Print · Campaign Design · Zine

A self-initiated brief: build a craft brewery brand from the ground up — identity, packaging, photography, and campaign collateral.

Three label designs — Headless Horseman, Old Crockern, Mermaid — each rooted in British folklore and regional storytelling, hand-carved from single lino blocks. Supported by environmental photography across Greater Manchester, Instagram content, stories, and a 10-page A5 printed zine. Research to final deliverable, every stage done by hand. The project asked what a brewery brand could look like if craft wasn't a marketing word but a structural constraint — every decision limited to what the hands and a knife could produce.

What makes this project distinct is the refusal to separate process from product. The lino carving is the brand — not a decorative choice layered onto a digital workflow, but the structural foundation every other decision was built on.

YEAR

2024–2025

TOOLS

Hand-carved lino, Photoshop, InDesign, Camera

ROLE

Sole designer

CONTEXT

Self-initiated / University

PROCESS

Research reference board showing British folklore imagery — Headless Horseman, Old Crockern of Dartmoor, and Mermaid mythological sources

01

RESEARCH

British folklore and regional mythology served as the primary visual source material. Three distinct legends — the Headless Horseman, Old Crockern (the spirit of Dartmoor), and the Mermaid — were chosen for their regional specificity and visual potential. Reference imagery was gathered from historical engravings, folklore archives, and landscape photography to ground each label in an authentic visual tradition.

Close-up of hand-carved lino block showing the subtractive carving process — tools, ink, and cut block detail

02

CARVING

Each label was hand-carved from a single lino block — no tracing, no shortcuts. The carving process required translating complex figurative forms into a purely subtractive medium, working in reverse. Every mark made was intentional; errors were permanent. This constraint became the defining quality of the final work, giving each label a visual character that digital reproduction couldn't replicate.

Behind-the-scenes environmental photography shoot across Greater Manchester — bottle styling and location setup

03

PHOTOGRAPHY

Environmental photography was shot across Greater Manchester to situate the brand in its actual geographic context. Locations were selected for their connection to the folklore subjects and to create a sense of authenticity around the craft positioning of the brand. The photography had to work as editorial content in its own right — not just as product photography.

Campaign deliverables layout — zine spreads, Instagram content mockups, and printed label designs

04

CAMPAIGN

Full campaign deliverables included Instagram content, animated stories, physical label mockups, and a 10-page A5 printed zine documenting the process from folklore research to final prints. Every element was designed to reinforce the hand-crafted, narrative-driven identity of the brand — the zine in particular framing the lino process as a subject worth documenting rather than concealing.

OUTCOME

Headless Horseman lino print label design — hand-carved figurative illustration on craft beer bottle
Old Crockern lino print label design — Dartmoor spirit carved from single lino block
Mermaid lino print label design — mythological figure hand-carved for craft brewery branding
Balance Brewing 10-page A5 zine spread — documenting the lino carving process and folklore research
Environmental photography — Balance Brewing bottles photographed on location across Greater Manchester
Physical mockups — printed labels applied to bottles with craft packaging design

This project proved that structural constraints — in this case, what a lino block and a knife could produce — aren't limitations but generators. The tactile process forced decisions that a purely digital workflow would have made optional, and the work is stronger for it.