Gutsy

A whole brand borne from an imperfect piece of refuse.

Overview

Gutsy explores how AI, health tracking, and conversational support could help people living with chronic digestive disorders make sense of the factors affecting how they feel.

my role

Sole Creator:
UX & Product Design
UX Research
Visual Design
Illustration & Data Visualization

team

Independent project

timeline

13 months

platform

Mobile App

tools

Figma
Adobe Creative Cloud
Pen & paper
Zoom

deliverables

Research
Design system
Interactive prototype
Case study

the product

An American whiskey as smoky as a metal forge.

Firescale is crafted for crafty men.

resources

connect

AT A GLANCE

What it's like
using SlotSpot

The experience centers on three moments: finding parking, getting there with confidence, and understanding savings.

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Navigate with Confidence

Turn-by-turn directions guide drivers directly to the most likely area tofind a space, rather than to the exact destination. This minimizes circling around.

see costs upfront

Compare time, price, and walking distance before deciding where to park.

COMMUNITY HELP

SlotSpot users anonymously share real-time parking data intel to help SlotSpot narrow down likely available parking spots.

the challenge

How do you make an American whiskey feel as rugged as the men it is crafted for?

A distinct niche in a crowded market.

I wanted the bottle to feel like something you might find on a workbench after the forge had gone cold.

DISCOVERY

I found a cool bottle.

The grittiness and imperfections of the discarded glass made me imagine an entire brand.

source material

Imperfection became the brief.

The warped glass, heavy proportions, and irregular surface gave the bottle a character polished packaging usually removes. I began pulling from that same world: scorched metal, worn tools, rough paper, handwriting, stamps, and the marks left behind by making things by hand.

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first marks

A humble piece of refuse turns into a character in its own story.

I began exploring the qualities that made the bottle interesting: weight, irregularity, age, and evidence of making. I felt that the glass and texture suggested the concept of fire, which I rolled with immediately. Glassblowing was evident, but I took the concept deeper into the realm of blacksmithing. Early name concepts like Ember and Forging Patina kept the fire motif going, with rough typography and handcrafted details emerging that would eventually become characteristic of the brand.

01

TOO MUCH TO TRACK

Information overload

Keeping track of everything affecting how I feel can become another task in itself.

KEY INSIGHT

Health information is scattered across symptoms, food, sleep, medication, stress, and daily routines.

01

TOO MUCH TO TRACK

Information overload

Keeping track of everything affecting how I feel can become another task in itself.

KEY INSIGHT

Health information is scattered across symptoms, food, sleep, medication, stress, and daily routines.

01

TOO MUCH TO TRACK

Information overload

Keeping track of everything affecting how I feel can become another task in itself.

KEY INSIGHT

Health information is scattered across symptoms, food, sleep, medication, stress, and daily routines.

Finding the name

Fire drew me to the bottle. Firescale gave the bottle a name.

The bottle’s imperfections reminded me of glass in the heat of a smoldering kiln, when bubbles and irregularities are still alive in the material. It made me think of the metal shop beside the glass studio where I spent so much time in college, an image that led my pencil toward fire, heat, kilns, and forging. One satisfying part of forging is when the oxidized layer formed under intense heat flakes away as the metal is worked, revealing the surface beneath: fire scale. The name became a segue into an entire story.

What patterns revealed

Tracking symptoms alone didn't make living with chronic illness any easier.

People weren't struggling to collect health information as much as understand what it meant. Three principles shaped the design:

01

REDUCE THE
BURDEN

Make logging simple enough to fit into daily life (not become another health-related task).

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

01

REDUCE THE
BURDEN

Make logging simple enough to fit into daily life (not become another health-related task).

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

01

REDUCE THE
BURDEN

Make logging simple enough to fit into daily life (not become another health-related task).

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

positioning

The imperfections became the marketing advantage.

Premium whiskey often competes through refinement, heritage, polished presentation, and familiar signals luxury. Firescale takes the opposite position. As mass production, synthetic materials, automation, and now generative AI make perfection increasingly cheap and ubiquitous, evidence of human hands becomes more valuable: irregular materials, wear, variation, organic and lively forms, and physical craft. Firescale turns those qualities into differentiation, giving a smoky American single malt distinctive shelf presence and a premium experience through the packaging, without making it precious, polished, or conventional.

The bottle didn’t need its imperfections designed away: they were the beginning of the unique story behind the brand.

World Building

Then the bottle found its makers.

A fictional brotherhood of blacksmiths and distillers gave Firescale a place, a history, and a reason to exist.

the story takes shape

I started designing based on things I already love.

Whiskey came naturally. I’ve always been drawn to smoky Scotch, where peat and char can make the experience feel almost elemental. That connected to another world I knew firsthand: forging metal, working around heat, and making things with my hands. As I sketched, those influences began merging with the imperfect bottle into a place, a product, and eventually the people who might have made it.

finding a place

Smoke needed a landscape.

If Firescale were an American smoky whiskey, I imagined it coming from the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest. Moss, timber, cold air, and the possibility of local peat felt like it contrasted naturally to heat, smoke, and forged metal. The landscape gave the brand a home and helped the workshop in my sketches become a real place in my imagination.

the selkirk brothers

The brand needed some people behind it.

As the world became clearer, I began imagining the people who would actually make this whiskey. I came up with two brothers who run a metal fabrication shop and do blacksmithing as a side business, selling beautifully forged sculptures. The Pacific Northwest became their home and the environment for the work. These brothers were practical, self-reliant craftsmen whose lives revolved around fire, metal, weather, and hard work. I borrowed their name from Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish castaway whose survival helped inspire Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to tie their heritage to Scotland, so imagined them as first generation Americans from Scottish immigrant parents; smoky scotch whiskey became what flowed through their veins. The Selkirk brothers gave Firescale something more useful than fictional founders. They gave me a way to ask what this brand would actually look like if these were the men making it.

The story gave every design decision a test: would the Selkirk brothers actually make it this way?

making the mark

Turning the story into something you could sip.

The world was taking shape. Now the lettering, bottle, label, and materials had to make it believable.

challenging my instinct

I questioned the idea that started everything: was this bottle the one the Selkirk brothers would use?

The found bottle had sparked the entire world of Firescale. But as that world became more believable, I wanted to know whether my first instinct still deserved to survive. I deliberately pulled away from the bottle I found to explore what the Selkirk brothers might choose if they were designing their brand. Canteens, utilitarian closures, metal cups, sculpted glass, and other forms shaped by their work and environment became deeper explorations into the narrative. Sketching these out was a way of challenging the most fundamental assumption in the project rather than protecting it simply because I loved the original object.

finding the voice

The mark had to feel handmade as well.

I pushed the identity through scripts, heavy serifs, monograms, ornaments, and hand-drawn lettering, searching for a mark that felt crafted rather than manufactured, and imperfect without feeling careless. I leaned toward angular forms, and searched for way to combine a hammer and anvil into the letter forms to further tell the story.

Building the label

The identity moved onto the bottle.

I translated the emerging visual language into the label itself, working through hierarchy, typography, handwritten details, irregular edges, and the neck band until the packaging felt like something that belonged in the Selkirks’ workshop.

Core user flow

Managing health as a habit.

Each step connects everyday inputs into patterns and personalized support.

Check In

Log how you're feeling with a quick daily check-in.

Add Context

Capture symptoms, food, medications, stress, hydration, sleep, and other relevant factors.

Recognize Patterns

See connections across health data that are difficult to notice day to day.

Get Support

Receive personalized insights, recommendations, and AI-assisted guidance.

Take Action

Use what you’ve learned to make informed choices and communicate more clearly with your care team.

The story stopped being an illustration, and became a set of decisions I could hold in my hands.

making it physical

The materials became part of the brand.

Firescale needed to feel as convincing in the hand as it did in the story. I moved from sketches into physical prototypes, testing paper, printing, embossing, handwriting, and construction directly on the bottle.

Prototyping the package

I was eager to see if the identity could survive the real thing.

I moved off the page and into physical materials, printing, cutting, wrapping, embossing, handwriting, stippling, and rebuilding the package by hand. The goal was to see whether the identity could actually live on the imperfect bottle that started it all.

materials testing

The imperfections had to look intentional.

Examining the bottle’s air seeds, irregular texture, and slight green-blue hue helped determine how the labeling should feel. I tested fibrous papers, torn edges, embossing, charred paper, handwriting, and layered details to see how far I could push the tactile character without making the package feel artificial or overly contrived.

hand-finished details

Each bottle became a record of its own making.

Batch numbers, barrel information, and the distiller’s signature turned the banderole into a record of the individual bottle, adding another layer of tactile, workshop-made detail.

casting the die

The identity became a tool that led to tactile packaging design.

Rather than simulate the character I wanted in the packaging, I turned the Firescale wordmark into a physical die. Laser-cutting the reversed letterforms let me press the identity directly into paper, giving a digital mark real depth, pressure, texture, and variation.

testing the presentation

The final material to put to the test was light itself.

I researched studio product-photography techniques like placing the product in front of a screen to simulate different environments, experimenting at home with lighting, backgrounds, composition, and the materials I already had available. Those tests showed me how light could emphasize the warped glass, paper texture, and embossed details. For the final campaign imagery, I used AI as another production tool to explore environments and art direction beyond what I could practically photograph myself.

Firescale stopped being merely a narrative about craft when it became a tangible character within its own story.

the finished bottle

Premium, without being precious.

Every choice now came together in one object: irregular glass, fibrous paper, embossed lettering, handwritten details, and a package designed to wear its imperfections proudly.

everything belonged together

Warped glass, torn paper, embossed lettering, handwriting and a wooden stopper stopped feeling like separate design decisions. Together, they made Firescale feel like an object that could only have come from the world behind it.

the story on the bottle

The back label carries the Selkirk brothers into the finished package, turning the fiction behind Firescale into something discovered while holding the bottle. Embossing, typography and material choices make that story physical rather than simply decorative.

the brand in the wild

Premium American smoky whiskey.

Built in the Pacific Northwest, but designed to travel. Firescale belongs wherever good whiskey, fire and good company meet.

Final reflection

The biggest lesson was to document everything.

Gutsy began as a way to help people track the many factors surrounding chronic illness. Designing it revealed a more important challenge: helping people recognize meaningful patterns without overwhelming them or overstating what the data can prove.

What I documented tells the story of the Firescale. What I didn't taught me why documenting the process matters.