Shady Acres, a multi award winning bar/restaurant and one of Asia’s top 50 had collaborated with Young Master Ales, one of Asia’s most prestigious breweries and highly honoured with its countless awards, to create a beer.

The only problem was they didn’t have a name or design for it. My task was to create these. It had to be catchy, visually appealing and distinct enough to make someone want to buy one whilst also being in line with both brands.

Shady Acres’ brand was very pop culture influenced. With that in mind, my thought was to devise a punchy name that sounded fun when ordering.

I sat down with Ryan (one of the Shady Acres founders), and after some brainstorming, we settled on ‘Beer Hug’.

The initial ideas involved a bear hugging a beer as a way of playing off the idea of a bear hug. This didn’t make visual sense so I switched them around and that’s why the beer is hugging a bear as opposed to anything else. I used the Young Master label format and a colour profile from their brand guide to visually link the two collaborators.

Beer Hug launched a sell out event and again the following year in the form of a birthday event. It went on to win Gold Cathay Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition in 2020 and Silver in 2021 and has been a hugely popular staple of the drinks menu at Shady Acres.