Every character earns its place.
I took Ralph Steadman as the visual anchor and drew every illustration myself. His style, ink-heavy, slightly unhinged and full of personality, suited a brewery that wanted to sit between heritage and irreverence. Each beer got its own character, drawn from historical figures, cultural references and culinary homages, in watercolour and ink. The range reads as one family, but every can has its own identity: pick it up on a back bar and you know what you're in for before you've read a word.
None of the illustrations are decorative. Dance Juice, brewed to mark the brewery's 500th brew, turned out to share its year with the Dancing Plague of 1518, when Frau Troffea took to the streets of Strasbourg and danced for days, eventually pulling 400 townspeople into the frenzy. So: medieval skeleton street dancers against a 15th-century village, and label copy inviting you to pop the top and join the plague. All Night Long features Lionel Richie because it's a session beer, and the pun does the work. Beer for Faye Wong is brewed with mushrooms, a nod to chef Tim Anderson's vegetarian ramen of the same name, itself a homage to the Hong Kong pop star. The illustration follows.
That's the system. Every character earns its place, and the concept, the flavour and the illustration all point at the same thing.
The refreshed identity now lives across pubs, bars, restaurants and craft beer retailers throughout London.
