A Colorado Icon Gets a Digital Refresh
Fat Tire is New Belgium's flagship—the beer that started it all. Its digital presence needed to feel as approachable and unpretentious as the brand itself, while still doing the heavy lifting of driving engagement and educating visitors about their sustainability initiatives.
I handled front-end development within the Optimizely/Episerver ecosystem, focusing on creating a warm, inviting experience that translates across devices. The brand's hand-drawn aesthetic presented an interesting challenge: making something feel organic and human while building with enterprise-grade tooling.
What I Built:
- Responsive Handlebars templates that maintain the hand-crafted feel at every breakpoint
- SCSS system with custom mixins for the brand's unique typography and color treatments
- Interactive sustainability timeline that tells the story of their environmental commitment
- Optimized asset pipeline that keeps page weight reasonable despite illustration-heavy design
Fat Tire's audience spans from craft beer newcomers to longtime loyalists. The site needed to welcome both without talking down to anyone—casual enough to browse, deep enough to explore.
