Last week, Erik, our artist for Distilled, shared some cool label designs he’s been working on for some of the spirits in the game. The post on Facebook drew some attention, as one person reached out to say that a few of them didn’t seem authentic – mainly, Baijiu, Soju, and Shochu. After a great conversation with one of our fans, Jerry, Erik decided to revise those labels, and I think they’re even better than before! Erik explains that process a bit further:
“Growing up in Hong Kong, Jerry has seen a lot of Baijiu labels. As you can imagine, it’s not always easy to capture the ‘spirit’ of a spirit without the cultural exposure to it (my “exposure” consists of one very hazy Soju-fueled night in Seoul and Daejeon, about a decade ago). Jerry volunteered some time to look over my revisions, and after a couple of drafts, I think we’ve got it! The new Baijiu label includes a lot more red, white, and gold, and follows some different stylistic conventions than the previous version. Also, we have new labels for Shochu and Soju that were also tweaked under Jerry’s watchful eye. The Shochu label pulls in the super-brushy strokes of Japanese calligraphy, and Soju leans into the clean, geometric forms from Korean typography. The green on the label is a reference to the iconic green Soju bottle—of course, putting a green label on a green bottle is rare, but since the labels never get applied to bottles in the game, I thought it was important to bring that specific color into the label in some way.”
NOTE: The icons along the bottom are placeholder—Erik assures you, he knows that Baijiu is not a European spirit. 