Epic Curing is a Washington, DC meat-curing company. The brief was a heritage-modern brand that could carry a small-batch cured-meats line into DC grocery and online shelves without leaning on faux-Victorian butcher tropes. Workhorse delivered the identity, the packaging system anchored on the Naked Bacon line, the social program, the event campaign, and the photography direction that made the brand look like the product it was selling.
Most cured-meat brands on the shelf in 2018 leaned hard into either heritage (engraved butcher illustrations, Old World framing) or modernist apothecary (clinical minimalism, big numbers). Epic Curing sat between them, and the label did both jobs at once: black and utilitarian, with the name set heavy and hollow, and the whole ingredient list printed on the front where a shopper actually reads it (PORK, MAPLE SYRUP, BROWN SUGAR, SALT, SPICES).
The product itself, photographed in camp light against scout-grade accessories, completes the frame: this is meat for people who cook outside, made by people who cure it by hand a few miles away.
Design System
The label does three jobs at once: black surface, the outline logo, and an ingredient list set as large as the product name. A badge family carries the system past the label, with the Epic Flavor meat-tag, the Brine-Smoke-and-Slice DMV roundel, and the stacked product name that extends across the line.
Smoke Meat Everyday.
The photography ran two ways. The launch shoot placed the products against camp-grade accessories: enamel mugs, brown eggs, scout-print matches, slate counters. The in-market series followed the brand out of the studio and into the city, to the kamado in the garden, the charcuterie boards at the table, the sandwiches at the restaurants that stock the line.
Shot around Washington between the 2018 launch and the 2019 season: a backyard kamado, deli boards, and the restaurants that serve the line.
14 of 35 frames.
The launch ran as a program. A monthly Instagram grid alternated photography with badge and tagline frames, and the Meet-the-Products series set each product name (NAKED BACON, EPIC PASTRAMI, TURKISH-D BACON) in the stacked outline logo over its own photography. The End of Summer Meat Up took the brand on the road: a month of tastings across DC breweries and restaurants, announced by posters designed as ticket stubs and backed by giveaway tickets and totes.
The marks, the palette, the type, and the designed work that carries them. One source feeds the live brand and this wall. Click any tile to open it.
