How to Make Chicago's Special Wheat Beer
The challenge was to develop an infographic wallchart on the microbrewery process for the Design Museum of Chicago. Beer has had a resurgenge in Chicago since brewing laws have changed. DMC wanted to wanted to showcase brewing as an art.
My goal was clarity (because it's a confusing process), visual engagement (to catch attention at the museum), and regional identity (for the people of Chicago to resonate with it). To achieve this, I broke the process into individual boxes, alternating Chicago transit colors to clearly distinguish each step, and connected them with a continuous line to create a sense of flow. The end result blends educational clarity with the character of Chicago.
Process
After watching several YouTube videos explaining the beer brewing process, I got to work breaking down the steps into more understandable portions. After this, I settled on wheat beer and tried out several compositions before settling on what you see here.
To make the art within, I drew out basic but accurate sketches of each machine in Procreate, making sure shadows and highlights were clearly defined. I then took each image in Adobe Photoshop and added a halfdone dot effect for depth and texture. Finally, I added them to Adobe Illustrator and added another outline on top to make them pop out.
