As you might have noticed, I've been gone for the past couple weeks. For the most part, it was because I was ill, but another part of it was helping my friend get ready for his BBQ sauce launch. Some of you might remember that I had made the logo, and you might also remember that he was considering having me do the labels as well. Well, as time had passed, I did get to do the labels, and they have already been printed, just in time for the mass production which begins this Monday (yep, it is even available for pre-order for another day or so). To celebrate, he is going to have a pre-launch BBQ next Saturday, on the 12th, as well. He's going to put a spotlight on me so to speak because of what I've done for him (and basically creating his image). For the first batch, these are the labels I made (for both flavors):

I think they came out good, but generally bland (however, my friend says they are still the best looking BBQ sauce labels on the market lol). On the next batch, I will have a few changes:

In my opinion, the rope border and everything looks a lot better. Nathan seems to think so as well, so this will likely be the basic design for the foreseeable future. The biggest change, however, will be the Southern Peach flavor. We'll be switching to a creamier color scheme, one similar to what I had originally proposed, to better differentiate sauce flavors. Upcoming flavors include:

Apple
Apricot
Spicy
Pineapple
Honey
Cherry
Strawberry

More will likely pop up eventually over time. Since he's paying me $100 per label, I get to look forward to making another easy $700 lol (when those sauces go into production anyway, when the labels are needed). The redesign, however, I did for free. No big deal. I hate making custom borders, though. That rope was made with all individual parts lol. Similar with what I had to do with the logo, but instead of one constant loop, it has straight edges, so it was a bit easier.

Thanks! For artwork, I use Photoshop. Just very high resolution images (so my computer uses a lot of its memory and processing power to handle them lol). Label design itself, I use Adobe Illustrator. I need to because pixel-based programs would not get the quality I need. To ensure the quality of artwork is good (labels and artwork are all 300dpi, CMYK), I make the artwork quite a bit larger than the size I need on the labels themselves in order to reduce the chance of pixelation, etc.

And yeah, my friend makes his sauces with pretty simple ingredients. No preservatives or anything. And only the Worcestershire sauce has any corn syrup in it, but it'd be a very small amount anyway. He wanted to make sure that his sauces were gluten free and used natural ingredients, too. BTW, he slapped one of the labels onto a bottle, and here's what it looks like: