Providence Brewing Company — Year One anniversary labels.
A two-part limited-edition series for a Providence micro-brewery's first anniversary. Two beers, two labels, one 2001: A Space Odyssey homage — starring the brewery's bulldog mascot in the astronaut's seat.
One brewery, one year, two beers.
Providence Brewing Company — a local micro-brewery in Providence, RI — was about to hit the one-year mark and wanted to celebrate with a limited-edition release. Two beers, sold only at the taproom, bottled in growlers with wax-dipped tops. They needed labels that would feel special enough to take home, collect, and hold onto.
The brewery's mascot is a bulldog. The anniversary theme needed to tie both beers together without making them look like the same beer twice. I pitched a 2001: A Space Odyssey homage — one label as the astronaut, the other as the ship — and they went for it.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
— The concept, in six words.
The Astronaut.
The first label puts the bulldog in the helmet — a close-up portrait framed inside the curved visor of a space suit, red emergency lighting washing across the reflection. The illustration leans into the uncanny stillness of the film's space-walk scenes, but with a bulldog's unimpressed expression doing the dramatic heavy lifting. Drawn entirely in Illustrator as a vector piece for clean reproduction at label scale.
The Ship.
The second label swaps the portrait for a panel — a stylized control console from the mothership, all red light blocks and white counter strips. PAL 9000 replaces HAL 9000. The red eye becomes a glowing paw-print. And tucked into the lower-right counter, the letters P-V-D call out the home city. For the eagle-eyed: the tiny text near the controls reads "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" — a small Easter egg for anyone holding the bottle close enough to read it.
Wrapped for the ride home.
Each bottle went home in a stamped brown paper bag with a hang-tag, keeping the craft-brewery feel intact through the handoff. The bulldog astronaut stamp carried the Odyssey theme onto the packaging — a small detail, but the kind of thing that makes a limited-edition feel like one.
