Beer is relatively simple. It comes down to four ingredients: water, hops, malt and yeast. And yet, from four simple ingredients, countless variations abound. Mix and match hops, add them at different times in the brewing process and you get a new beer. Roast malted barely a little longer or at a higher temperature and you get a new beer. The permutations, and therefore possibilities, are endless.
Breweries are much the same: buildings, equipment, supplies, people. Get the right people together and great beer happens. Such was the case with long-time friends and homebrewers Dan and Marty of the Absurd Brewing Company.
The Absurd Brewing Company is a small experimental brewery. Its founders and co-owners have home-brewed together since 2012. Recently, the team considered moving the brewery out of Marty’s basement and into a manageable, small-scale operation.* The new location would provide more space to brew and free Dan and Marty from the basement’s uncomfortably low ceiling.
* For the time being, the Absurd Brewing Company remains in the basement.
Logo Design Brief
The brewery founders believed their financial obligation was to the beer. Wary of taking on too much debt, they allocated a small budget for the brewery’s logo design and marketing materials. The initial design brief called for a simple, but memorable brewery logo, free of pretense and affectation. Neither Dan nor Marty have formal brewing experience. They learned everything about brewing beer as a result of trial and error. Therefore, the pair doesn’t view the Absurd Brewing Company as a traditional brewery. Rather, it is seen as a workshop or lab to learn what does and does not work. Because of this philosophy, the design brief included instructions to avoid traditional brewery logo imagery, like hops and barley.
The initial design brief called for a simple, but memorable brewery logo, free of pretense and affectation.
The brewery logo was to be simple and fun. With a name like Absurd, it should not take itself too seriously. It should look professional and easily translate to a number of products including beer can labels and a limited range of brewery merchandise. To save cost, it should also work well in one-color applications.
Brewery Logo Design Process
Very early in the brewery logo design process, it became apparent the Absurd Brewing Company logo required an unorthodox approach. Attempts to create a traditional company logo left the fun-loving and quirky brewery looking and feeling, well, corporate. Conventional logo design practices flattened out the brand’s charm and whimsy. The Absurd Brewing Company logo needed to feel light-hearted and irreverent; playful and fantastic. Any attempt to pair a traditional brewery logo with the Helvetica typeface smacked of starched shirts and quarterly earnings spreadsheets.
Conventional logo design practices flattened out the brand’s charm and whimsy.
That wasn’t what the brewery was about. It wasn’t what the beer was about. And it certainly wasn’t what Dan and Marty were about.
The brewery founders intended to be front and center with their customers. The brand needed to reflect their personality and passion. Any attempt to create a brand identity for the Absurd Brewing Company which did not telegraph Dan and Marty’s creativity, energy and innovation ran the risk of being seen as disingenuous and incongruent.
The Absurd Brewing Company logo and supporting marketing materials needed to sit outside convention. The brewery logo design would need to be clean, professional and translate across media and remain legible in various sizes, but it also had to have an individual personality that bucked convention. Insomniac Studios gave up the search for an appropriate logo typeface and focused instead on creating one. The pencil sketch below shows the logo design agency’s hand-drawn custom typeface. This design ultimately became the type for the Absurd Brewing Company logo. To keep time and cost down, no other letters were created. Later, a slab-serif typeface replaced Brewing Company in the final logo design.
As the first few concepts didn’t quite capture the brewery’s light-hearted aesthetic, Insomniac Studios turned to developing more illustrative logo concepts. It wasn’t long before the flying pig concept emerged. The pencil sketch below shows an early draft of what the final flying pig logo would look like.
Because flying pigs can go where they please, the logomark can be detached from the logotype and allowed to move around in space. It can move closer to the viewer or fly upside down. The freedom adds personality to the flying pig logo and serves to establish it as a character without the need for additional versions.
The flying pig, affectionately nicknamed Frank after 17th century Renaissance man Francis Bacon.
The flying pig, affectionately nicknamed Frank after 17th century Renaissance man Francis Bacon, is paired with the logotype in an unconventional fashion. Rather than positioning the flying pig directly over the center of the logotype or conventionally aligned to the left of the type, the flying pig logomark is tucked in the recessed space above the U and R in Absurd. This helps to reduce the logo’s overall height and gives the pig the appearance it is lifting off in flight.
To give the logo even more flexibility, the type, when not in combination with the pig, can feature one of several photographic textures. Each texture needs to meet two conditions: one, the texture does not interfere with the type’s legibility and two, the texture is appropriate and relatively absurd. The examples below include plaid, feathers and butterfly wing texture applications.
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Brewery Logo Design
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Beer Can Design
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Brewery Logo T-Shirts
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Brewery Logo Hats
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References
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Insomniac Studios logo design, branding and marketing case studies are an in-depth analysis of a project or concept. Some marketing case studies are the result of a client relationship. Others explore solutions to hypothetical projects. Not all marketing case studies represent a contract or partnership with the entity presented. The logo design, branding, marketing, graphic design, advertising, strategies, concepts and analysis presented are the copyrighted and intellectual property of Insomniac Studios and its clients.