Creating a heritage brand worthy of a state’s national pride.

With the original Power’s Bitter not brewed in over a decade and not available on tap since the early 2000s we set about building a revitalised ‘heritage’ brand for today’s audience. Power’s Ultra Smooth is a brand brewed for the warm Queensland weather, with packaging that pays tribute to the pivotal time in the state’s history when brewer, Bernie Power built the Yatala Brewery in 1988.

Back in the 1980’s the Sunshine State embraced Power’s as one of their own and – when Power’s sponsored the Broncos in their inaugural season and beyond – together they wrote themselves into Queensland folklore. With such pride and fondness for the brand we needed to deliver a design that could tap into the passion and pride whilst connecting with the next generation.

Originally there were a number of beers launched under the Power’s brand, including Power’s Light and Power’s Gold. When creating the new Power’s Ultra Smooth design we wanted to inject some QLD state heartland with the use of burgundy but more importantly sift through the archives to select latent visual elements which could help inform the design. This created a semiotic familiarity from bygone days whilst allowing the identity to deliver much needed modernity. From the modernised typographic suite to the revitalised iconography, the art was to pull it all together to deliver confident offering built from its heritage.

Original brewery founder Bernie Power said: “Making a beer that resonates with people is a challenging thing, and I know everyone involved in this has been very careful with what has ended up inside and outside the bottle.”