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I was referred to the owner by another client of mine who thought I could help this small, struggling distillery in Cumming, GA. I had no idea a distillery in Cumming even existed - that town is about the size of modern-day "Mayberry". Although the company had been in the market for 3 years, once the newness had worn off. The lack of a brand voice (plus trying to rebound from COVID) had caught up with them. At the onset, I helped out with their failing billboards. The success of those efforts, plus a ton of brainstorming/consultation with the owner, landed me an offer to join their team and have some equity in the business as "CCO" or "Creative Director", depending on who was talking. Shifting and confusing titles. How wonderful. I was initially brought in to do the branding. Then came packaging. Then the website. Then photography. Then ads. Then trade materials. At some point I stopped asking, 'Is this my job?' and started asking, "What's the business NEED?"

LEGENDS Distillery

Creative Direction • Brand Development • Packaging • Website • Marketing & MORE!

I was referred to the owner by another client of mine who thought I could help this small, struggling distillery in Cumming, GA. I had no idea a distillery in Cumming even existed - that town is about the size of a modern-day "Mayberry". Although the company had been in the market for 3 years, once the newness had worn off, the lack of a brand voice (plus trying to rebound from COVID) had caught up with them. At the onset, I helped out with their failing billboards. The success of those efforts, plus a ton of brainstorming/consultation with the owner, landed me an offer to join their team and have some equity in the business as "CCO" or "Creative Director", depending on who was talking. Shifting and confusing titles. How wonderful. I was initially brought in to do the branding. Then came packaging. Then the website. Then photography. Then ads. Then trade materials. At some point I stopped asking, 'Is this my job?' and started asking, "What's the business NEED?"

Legends Distillery brand presentation and sales materials

Overview

With limited visibility across digital and retail channels, Legends Distillery required a unifying brand system capable of integrating a growing list of spirits for both on and off-premise sales across the Southeast region.

From 2023 to 2025, I incorporated their existing logotype and brandmark into a complete brand system to align the company's image and messaging into a scalable identity that distributors could confidently sell.

Legends Distillery brand identity system
Legends Distillery sales support materials

Role & Scope

I joined LEGENDS as Creative Director with a pretty simple objective: figure out what the brand needed, then build it.

That meant owning the creative direction across the business, from brand strategy and packaging to advertising, digital, social media, merchandise, and sales materials. I worked directly with ownership and the board on budgets, priorities, and rollout while also doing the actual creative work from concept through final production. As the brand evolved, so did the job. I helped shape new products, develop marketing opportunities, support distributor relationships, and build the digital infrastructure needed to sell and educate customers online.

60%

Statewide distribution increase

55%

Increase in website traffic

100%

Increase in total online sales

5

Distributor Partners

Expanded from 2 GA partners to include AL, TN and SC

Approach

Retail Bottles

COVID had left the company without the budget for a traditional rebrand, so I had to build the brand in stages. I started with the most immediate customer-facing problem: the bottles. Production limitations meant the new labels had to stay within the basic specifications of the originals, so I worked within those constraints rather than fighting them. The existing line lacked consistency in color, logo treatment, design, and sizing. I unified the system with richer jewel tones and metallic accents, giving the portfolio a more elevated presence without requiring a completely new production setup. The original bottles had a great vintage vibe, but I wanted to bring them forward. I moved to a more squared-off shape for a modern feel and added an embossed logo to the side. It helped with brand recognition, but also made the bottles more slip-resistant. Got to keep those bartenders happy. The finished bottles were extremely well received by customers, the board, and our distributors. That success led directly to the next problem: the case boxes.

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Approach II

Wholesale Case Boxes

The original wholesale cases were standard white corrugated 12-packs with a tiny logo sticker. To get attention, reps would hang a poster off the stacked boxes. Not great.

I saw an opportunity to make the packaging work harder. I created full-color, prominently branded 6-pack cases that lowered the initial commitment for new distributors while turning the case itself into a retail display. It was a raging success. With the physical brand finally getting some traction, it was time to tackle the bigger problem: the brand story.

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Approach III

Website & Online Sales

The existing website was bloated, outdated, and, to put it politely, not telling a particularly clear story. The patented filtration technology was a legitimate differentiator, but the explanation around it wasn't as transparent as it needed to be. The bourbon market was changing. Consumers wanted to know where their spirits came from, how they were made, and why one bottle was different from another. I rebuilt the brand story around three things: Trust, Taste, and Education. That meant telling the real history behind the technology, using detailed tasting notes and awards to demonstrate quality, and turning the website into something more useful than a digital brochure: a resource for bourbon and spirits. The finished site combined product sales, merchandise, tasting-room and event bookings, production and sourcing information, tasting notes, and a comprehensive bourbon library. Designed, written, and implemented by our in-house agency. Your humble narrator.

Legends Distillery website redesign and e-commerce

Approach IV

Distributor Support

The distillery also had a fractured relationship with its distributors. COVID had left the company with almost no budget, no real plan, and no one in the middle to help distributors sell a smaller producer in a dramatically changed market.

I worked directly with executives, regional managers, and sales reps to build a more cohesive support system, including promotional tools, incentives, and a framework they could actually use. The goal was simple: give distributors a reason to want Legends in their portfolio again.

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Selected Projects

Tequila, Cigars, Celebrities & DJs

We're about to wrap this up. Thanks for hanging in there.
The following are just a few projects within The Legends Saga that I had a lot of fun implementing.

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"Stay Legendary"

"Stay Legendary" was sitting in the owner's email signature, so I decided to steal it for the rebrand launch. With almost no budget, I built the campaign around pop-culture legends and introduced the "Legends Tag," an idea I may or may not have borrowed from Fender guitars. I also hid the logo within each image.

The campaign worked well enough that, when I later took over the tasting and event rooms, I turned the artwork into large-format pieces for the Legacy Room. Finding the hidden logos eventually became a game for our increasingly inebriated guests. Big fun.

Yeah C'mon Rebrand

One of our spirits was a collaboration with veteran Atlanta radio personality Southside Steve Rickman, built around his signature exclamation, "Yeah C'mon!"

For his two-year anniversary and a limited-edition 100-proof bourbon, I redesigned the label and box from scratch. Building on the approach that worked for the tequila, I incorporated his old microphone on the back as a nod to his radio career and used smoke on the front to represent the bourbon's signature character. Steve loved it, and both the presentation and the bourbon performed extremely well with existing fans and new buyers.

White Label Program

Legends offered a private-label program for on- and off-premise clients, but the process had become a branding free-for-all. Clients could dictate colors, minimize or remove the Legends identity, and essentially start from scratch every time.

I created a standardized template that allowed us to quickly incorporate each client's logo, story, and accent colors without sacrificing the brand system. The result was cleaner, faster to produce, more consistent, and much better received by the clients.

Bourbon Infused Cigars

I negotiated a deal with Payne-Mason to create a cigar based on our best-selling 100 Bourbon, with the goal of selling it online and in the tasting room.

Their team gave me complete autonomy over the presentation on their site, allowing me to keep the branding consistent with our own e-commerce experience. It was a good example of how far the Legends brand had expanded by that point.

Rattlesnake Tequila

When Legends launched a tequila in 2024, it needed to stand apart completely from the existing portfolio. The owner wanted an actual snake on the bottle. I argued that this was perhaps a little on the nose. He won.

I studied the category and built something intentionally unlike the other tequilas on the shelf. Inspired in part by a Fiji Water bottle, I created a fully transparent label so the desert scene could show through the tequila without interfering with the required legal copy. It's one of the projects I'm most proud of, and its reception in the local market reinforced something I've learned repeatedly: Uniqueness gets noticed.

LANE LEE  |  CREATIVE BUILDER

© 2026 Lane Lee. All rights reserved. All content is prohibited from any use and/or reproduction without advance written consent.

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