What is Crocodiles Out Late?

It all started when I was a design student at the Illinois Institute of Art, and I came across this awesome opportunity to illustrate a few beer labels for Saugatuck Brewery out of Michigan. The brewery asked what website they wanted me to include on the label, so I wanted to come up with something a little more provocative. I took the first three letters of my name, C O L, and came up with some funny acronyms, and Crocodiles Out Late was born. This brand name became fitting since I would post my artwork and stickers all across Chicago late at night. I liked the personality and the hint of rebellion that it created.

From there, each year, I evolved the logo and the branding, and it has been a really cool process to see where it started from and where it is currently. Recently, I’ve been feeling pretty nostalgic. Although I can’t drink beer anymore, I liked the idea of creating a beer label-inspired logo as a nod to the start of my design career with beer labels for Saugatuck Brewing Company. I’ve always really liked the vintage Miller High Life ‘Girl on the Moon’ beer label, so I used that as inspiration to start.

With buying a house and setting my roots in Portland recently, I thought it would be nice to include a nod to the native art of the Pacific Northwest by creating a simple and stylistic version of the crocodile. I wanted to infuse some of that personality and boldness into the brand, which I tried to do with this hand-drawn Americana font. I’d come up with some fancy reason why, but truthfully I’ve been obsessed with watching ‘Yellowstone’ and wanting to be a cowboy. All in all, I’m pretty stoked on this one. It kind of feels like vintage beer labels meet Western Americana meet the Ramones.