Designed to Unleash Craft Beer Creativity

Poppels, a formerly small craft brewery, originally the brainchild of 15 beer enthusiasts, has grown significantly from its humble start in 2012. With growth came new challenges, one of which was the lack of clearly defined portfolio and design strategies. Without structure, every new release resulted in a painful process to ensure recognition, distinction, shelf stand-out and value.

Popples needed to find a system that allowed them to unleash their creativity and focus on their craft. Pond Design was commissioned to create a portfolio strategy and design system that clearly assigned roles for each product in the portfolio and map out design principles for both old and new releases.

To ensure impact and brand recognition, a conscious choice was made to use Poppels’ original design concept with its strong brand blocking cues. The assortment was then divided in to three clear ranges, each with its distinct role, look and storytelling; The Core Series, The Selection Series and The Experimental Series.

The fundamentals of the new design system consisted of four strong cohesive elements: logo, typography, color blocking and a new illustration style, with unique and quirky stamps and stickers on the label front to capture the brand’s playfulness and down-to-earth attitude.

The Illustration style is accompanied by an icon library to show how you can best pair this beer, and those pairings are not necessarily what you would expect. How about a beer that is best to drink paired with a pair of sunglasses on your nose and a bag of French fries?

For The Core Series each product was given a bold and simplistic background illustration for differentiation and to tell the product story. On The Experimental Series the illustrations form a more doodle like pattern and the entire design is colorful and vibrant. The Selection Series on the other hand has a more stripped back and predominantly white look to convey the crafted and superior quality small batch nature of the products.

The new system helped clarify how to treat new products within each series, such as limited editions, co-labs and seasonal beers. With the new portfolio and clear design structure, every new product now has a place, role and expression. The new structure allows Poppels to keep experimenting with new brews, tastes and products with confidence and creativity for friends and fans to enjoy.