Family friends, Les & Jen Barr opened Roof Hound Brewing Co. in 2016. I had the honour of helping with the branding throughout the entire business.
Back in 2013, Les had been working on one of his craft beers, a porter inspired by an old family story that involved the dog getting into some of Les’ grandfather’s humble home-brew, and therefore getting a little buzz, climbing onto the roof and howling all night. Les told me this charming folklore and his wish to create an image of a hound on a roof for the bottle labels of one of his first beers: Big Brown Roof Hound.
The original Big Brown Roof Hound sketch, cut from my sketchbook and gifted to Les & Jen.
Little did we know then that Roof Hound would become an entire Brewpub 3 years later. From that simple drawing we created a brand, the logo for Roof Hound Brewing Co. Les built the pub himself, with the occasional help from a few friends, and I was honoured to be one of them. We painted all the branding graphics, from the lettering and imagery on the walls inside to the giant Roof Hound herself on the front of the building.
One of my favourite parts of the branding was the growler design. We created a vintage newspaper clipping, a mid-century small town chronicle of the scandalous events in little old Digby: a bonafide drunken hound dog.
The day we finished painting the storefront, along with the official Roof Hound delivery van adorned with @beejaedee-designed decals.
Roof Hound has been a great project and has since been welcomed into the homes of many a craft beer lover throughout the Maritimes and beyond. Many thanks to Les & Jen and the team at Roof Hound for including me in this project.
