Likewise! I’m the Art Director at Henderson and I’ve been involved in the creation and production of pretty much every visual communication piece of the past six years since we opened our doors, from product packaging to ad campaigns, print collateral, POS displays, online content, promotional goods & apparel. I’ve also been responsible for a good deal of copywriting.

Never a dull moment, that’s for sure. We’ve made the “Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies” list for a couple of years running, but that growth was always part of the plan, so it’s the evolution of the character of the brewery that’s been most fascinating for me to experience, as we’ve navigated challenges, won some and lost some and, along the way, grown into our identity.

When we launched our first beers six years ago, we wanted to distinguish ourselves from the trend-chasing pack by communicating to customers our more classic approach to brewing beers. We opted for a buttoned-down, old-school look and feel, one that we hoped felt like we’d been around a while. The strategy worked and we landed the loyal drinkers we were looking for, but after five years, the craft beer scene in Ontario had evolved and we agreed that the time had come to signal to our customers that we had evolved, too. We were maybe more relaxed, friendlier, more comfortable in our own shoes and less concerned with defining ourselves in opposition to others.

Our flagship, Henderson’s Best is definitely in a category of its own and, in particular, was successful in attracting a loyal drinker. But, as with our other core brands, it was important for us to come across as reliable, but not staid or stuck in our ways.

Our Lagered Blonde has always been positioned as our most approachable beer; one that the Untappd crowd were never going to spend too much time on. And it was selling, for sure, but the story behind the Food Truck name hadn’t really developed a life of its own and we opted to focus more on the appeal and drinkability of the beer style.

In November of 2016, as part of our monthly “Ides” series, we brewed an Imperial Stout called “Put a Scarf On, Geddy.” This release told a story, as each of our Ides beers do. In this case, it was the possibly-apocryphal story of how Rush’s vocalist and bassist became known as Geddy. Word of the beer (then the beer itself) reached Rush and they, in turn, reached out to us with their idea of releasing a Rush beer. They liked that we were a homegrown Canadian brewery and that we liked Rush enough to brew a beer “about” them. Various events, including the untimely passing of their incredible drummer, Neil Peart, conspired to put the initiative on pause for a few years and, frankly, we thought the project was kaputt, but we connected with them again last year and voilà. As always, I was involved in the design, perhaps more as a production artist since it was really about pulling from Rush’s stable of visual identity elements and arranging them on a can in a way that appealed to their management.

We found that having something new and interesting in our online shop helped drive home delivery sales of all our beers, and our brewery-only release schedule became pretty manic. A lot of fun but also, frankly, fairly exhausting. In 2020-2021, I worked on around 45 beer can/label projects per year. Almost one per week! My best answer to your question around freshness and creative approach is: improvisation and fearlessness. I mean, there was rarely time for any other approach. The Myth of Permanence lager series, though, was one time this approach kind of bit me in the ass. I came up with this quasi-Buddhist existential concept and designed a label featuring an elaborate sand castle about to be wiped out by a wave. Hilarious, right? Then I realized…it’s a series! I was going to have to come up with an illustration of the The Myth of Permanence every month in perpetuity. Fifteen months later, The Myth of Permanence series itself is coming to an end. We’re working on another lager series for 2022. One of the wonderful things about small batch beer brewing is the chance to be fluid and ever-changing. It’s a real-life illustration of the transience of all things.

Reliability is definitely one of our most important brand values. Where our core beers are concerned, that reliability means never stocking out of the beers and delivering consistent quality. When COVID restrictions were put in place, our online sales surged and we began a home delivery service. I figured the service ought to have a name and Henderson Delivers seemed like an obvious choice to me because of the double entendre in which we literally deliver beer but also allude to the idiomatic usage of “delivers,” as in “come up with the goods.” I hope that’s what it means to our customers, too. 2020-2021 was a challenging time to reach new customers but an excellent opportunity to foster loyalty.

Steve, our GM, had been pleading with me for…probably years, actually…to create an anthropomorphized “beer thing”: a hop with legs or a barley sheaf with arms. I don’t think it mattered to him what it was as long as it was a beer-related “character.” To be honest, I wasn’t charmed by the idea and kept stalling. But the home delivery service presented a stronger argument for a creation of this sort, so the running can came about, but still in a tentative way. The way I remember things, your upgrade of the running can wasn’t really an “ask” on our part, more of a bonus track on your album of offerings. It was a nice surprise, and they (is the can really a man? I can’t make out any gender-identifying parts) look great on merch, too. We’ve never really had a “mascot.” You guys helped give us our first mascot!

Never say never, but I think you can count our loyalty to beer among our traits of reliability. I think you can also count on us to open the door when opportunity knocks.