Ditched the Drink

Sober Coach Heather Lowe

Brand identity, social templates, and course workbooks.

Client
Heather Lowe

Year
2023

A blue circular sign with a white crown and a star above it.

It was time to lay down the crown.

Heather and I met on Instagram, where I illustrated her for The Sober Illustrator and we knew right away that we loved working together, so I was so happy when she asked me to tackle her rebrand.

Her old mark was a crown, and it had served her for a while. A crown is about arriving somewhere and being elevated and becoming the highest version of yourself, which are lovely promises, but often not something someone who is just quitting alcohol is able to envision for themselves.

It was also carrying more than one mark can carry. Nothing in it said drinking, so the name had to explain the entire business by itself, and it had drifted into two different color moods depending on where you found it, which is sometimes what happens to a brand that grows faster than it gets looked at, and Heather's had grown a lot.

Digital illustration of a woman with light skin, blue eyes, long brown hair, smiling, wearing a dark green top, set against a light blue background.

Heather coaches high-achieving women. Executives, caregivers, business owners, women who look completely fine from the outside but are often longing for more. Her own description sums it up perfectly: she's not an alcoholic, she's just over it. No rock bottom required, no label, no shame about any of it, just onward to a new and more fulfilling path.

What we made

A cocktail glass, tipped over, with flowers spilling out of it instead of liquid.

The idea was that while you're pouring one thing out of your life you're bringing all this magic and wonder and whimsy into it. So instead of a crown waiting at the end of the journey, we're looking at the moment of the pour itself, and at the fact that what comes out isn't loss at all.

It also answers the fear that's actually there. Nobody worries that sobriety will be bad for them, they worry that it'll be boring and small and beige. A glass full of flowers argues with that before anyone has read a single word.

Graphic design featuring the phrase 'DITCHED THE DRINK' curved around a tipped wine glass with flowers and confetti below.

The type is borrowed on purpose

It's a high-contrast deco serif, which is the register of cocktail menus and liquor labels and hotel bars, and that is very much the point.

Someone thinking about making this change is often half convinced that the aesthetic gets worse. That she's trading a beautiful wine bar for a church basement and inspirational quotes printed over sunsets. Taking the alcohol industry's own typography and handing it to a sobriety coach felt like a small reclamation, and what it says is that the glamour comes with you.

Built for a woman with a lot of doors

Heather does not have one offer. She has a membership, private coaching, a business mentorship arm for women who want to become coaches themselves, a self-paced course, two podcasts, retreats, and workplace consulting. (She is a marvel.)

A single logo would have started falling apart almost immediately, so she got a system instead.

Text reads 'DITCHED THE DRINK' on a pink background with an illustration of a tipped wine glass pouring out some flowers.

Text spiral reading 'DITCHED THE DRINK' featuring a tipped wine glass with flowers pouring out on a blue background.

Gold background with white circular text and design in the center, featuring the words 'THE OLD THEATRE' and decorative floral elements.

"Love your talent and undeniable style, but I really love working with you because you read my mind, calm me down, and somehow get me even when I don't."

—Heather Lowe, Ditched the Drink

Then the workbooks

I designed a series of workbooks for her online course, plus her social template system, and this was the part I had the most fun with. They're templates rather than finished documents, which you can tell because the placeholder copy still says "blah blah blah" and "some sort of narrative here could be cute?"

Two women with backpacks high-fiving on a rocky outcrop on a sunny day. They are smiling and dressed for hiking.

A digital graphic design cover page with a blue background titled 'Chapter 2: The Coach's Way'. It contains placeholder text and two photos: one of a woman practicing yoga in a lit room, and another of a woman sitting at a desk writing in a notebook with a cup of coffee, both with white borders and decorative star accents.

A results page with two images and a paragraph. The first image shows a girl jumping on a checkered floor with the caption 'Mostly A's: You are a BOX JUMPER.' The second image depicts a person walking along a path in a field at sunset with the caption 'Mostly B's: You are a PATH LAYER.' The paragraph explains the concept of combining elements and developing skills to overcome limitations.

A colorful infographic titled 'Mel Robbin's System Thinking Model' with two columns labeled A and B. Column A lists traits like 'It's easy for me to know what I want' and 'I've been called scattered,' while column B lists traits like 'It's hard for me to know what I want' and 'I've been called a buzzkill.' The infographic features decorative floral illustrations in the corners.

What I'd tell you about it.

Branding a person is harder than branding a place. A bar has an address and a menu. A coach has only herself, so everything you make has to sound like her rather than sounding like design.

The real test is whether she can keep making things without me, and Heather has been making things nonstop ever since, and it all still holds together. She just won Coach of the Year at the Sans Bar Academy Awards (no big deal).