For this redesign, Portland General Store enlisted a friend of theirs of more than 20 years, designer Colin Metcalf.
The goal was to express Portland General Store’s values: American legacy, effective, natural products, in an unapologetic, unabashedly-manly form.
For inspiration, they gave Colin the “germ”, the “rollmark”, the interlaced, ornamental-type glyphs stamped on firearms from makers Smith & Wesson and FN Herstal. The final, complete design also draws heavily from the masculine iconography of American “machine age” design and traditional labeling of spirits bottles.
Before: