Taxi Studio – Carlsberg

“ Taxi Studio has collaborated with Carlsberg on a major global rebrand, unifying its diverse markets with a simple yet versatile identity system that champions the principles of great Danish design.

Following extensive research into the brand’s 171-year heritage, Carlsberg’s famous brand elements have been carefully re-crafted for the first time in several years, striking the perfect balance between form and function.

These assets combine to form a coherent master brand-led identity system that works across packaging, promotions and POS materials for all of Carlsberg’s global variants. The core elements include the logo, hop leaf, crown and brand typeface, as well as the signature of Carlsberg founder JC Jacobsen.

Jessica Spence, chief commercial officer at Carlsberg Group, says: “The Carlsberg brand has an incredibly unique history. There’s no other brand that played this sort of role as a turning point in the global brewing industry. That makes it a fantastic opportunity to work on.”

Spencer Buck says: “The new design system is very much anti-trend. It’s designed to be permanent, or more permanent than any iteration of the design system has been before. There shouldn’t be any need to change this for a good long time. That’s part of the sustainable thinking that was built into the very core of the brief.”

Jessica Felby, design director on the project for Carlsberg, says: “Designs used to last 10 years, then five, now brands redesign every three years. It’s all based on trends that go out of style. We weren’t going to do that.”

Felby adds: “It’s only when you see the previous design that you realise that the new design is new, because it looks like a design that’s always been there. It looks like what Carlsberg should always have been.”

The rejuvenated Carlsberg brand is launching in Scandinavian markets in September 2018 and will be rolled out globally over the course of 2019.”