BOONE COUNTY BRAND BOOK

“In 1785, the Bluegrass was a wild and bloody place. The landscape was raw, the living thin, and conflict was inevitable. And when a God-fearing man named Ezra Tanner founded Petersburg, Kentucky smack atop a prehistoric graveyard of the Fort Ancient people, he had made a major mistake. A mistake he paid for with lives.”

Those stories are a fantastic foundation for a brand, don’t you think? Evocative, intriguing, reading like a can’t-miss Hollywood script. And for a reincarnated distillery brand like Boone County Distilling, that script links past to present with riveting authenticity.

Founders Josh and Jack came to us to help create a new (kind of) distillery brand — one based on more than a hundred years of rich local distilling history and legend, lost to the wind and sparingly mentioned in the bourbon history books. We immediately began to research and gather data to inspire a great story. We learned that it was in Petersburg in 1833 that brothers William T. and John Snyder founded a distillery, which produced more than a million gallons annually.

Neltner Small Batch quite literally walked the streets of Petersburg, conversed with historians and researched volumes of the Loder Diary archives to meticulously detail the backbone of the brand. We authored a 24-page brand book that served as a touchstone for the distillery interior and chronicles a historical journey from the 1800s and inspired the brand positioning line: Made by Ghosts. The assignment was to create the brand top to bottom, including executions for a production facility, a museum, and a number of bottled spirits. So to keep all of those disparate materials coordinated with a brand framework, we created this brand book, 100% designed, written and produced by NSB.

Creative Director – Keith Neltner
Brand Leader – Andi Bussard
Research – Andi Bussard, Sarah Leugers, Keith Neltner
Writer – Jeff Chambers, Sarah Leugers
Designer – Kyle Ebersole, Chris Dye
Photographer – Ryan Kurtz
Illustrator – Tom Post