CASE STUDY: THE LIGHTHOUSE SERIES

The Lighthouse Series
Brand identity, packaging, and campaign system for Round Barn Distillery's four-release bourbon and rye program

Role: Brand steward — design, art direction, photography direction, copywriting, and sales enablement across the full program

The story

Before GPS. Before radio. Before any of it, there was the light.

A sailor didn't need to know your name to trust you. He just needed to know you'd be there. Steady. Burning. Unblinking through the gale.

Southwest Michigan's shoreline is scarred with that history. Keepers who didn't sleep. Lenses that never dimmed. A covenant between land and sea written not in ink, but in flame.

The Lighthouse Series is our answer to that covenant. Four releases. Four names carried by the men and women who held the dark at bay. Each bottle a blend shaped by hand, by instinct, and by the kind of patience that only comes from knowing what's at stake when the fog rolls in.

We didn't rush this. You'll know why when you taste it.

The challenge

A four-release bourbon and rye program needed a voice strong enough to carry a buyer from a first bottle to a fourth — collectible, not just consumable. Every touchpoint, from the label to the retail floor, had to hold that same restraint and weight, whether it was reaching a first-time buyer scrolling an email or a trade partner deciding how much shelf space to risk.

The system across touchpoints

Label and packaging design. Presale email campaign. Lifestyle photography, art directed for pour shots, portraits, and bar settings. Social video, full-length and short-form teasers. Retail signage for in-store display. A trade sell sheet built to support distributor conversations. One voice — poetic, salt-worn, unhurried — carried across every one of them without a reset in tone.

How it came together

Directed and shot the lifestyle photography that carries the brand into real settings — behind the bar, in hand, at pour. Designed the label, packaging, and all supporting print and digital assets. Wrote the brand story and all release copy. Built the trade-facing sell deck to support distributor conversations directly.

What it did for the brand

Release No. 1, the Watchman, sold out completely before Release No. 2 shipped. In the same seven-month window it launched in, Round Barn's Instagram audience reach nearly quadrupled year over year, with the bulk of the account's follower growth for the year landing in that stretch. The four-release structure it introduced has become Round Barn's ongoing framework for limited releases.