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 reduce printing costs, the brewery logo design 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 too corporate. Conventional logo design approaches flattened the brand’s charm and whimsy. The Absurd Brewing Company logo needed to feel light-hearted and irreverent; playful and fantastic.

Conventional logo design approaches flattened out the brand’s charm and whimsy.

Attempts to pair a traditional brewery logo with the Helvetica typeface smacked of starched shirts and quarterly earnings spreadsheets. It 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.

It wasn’t long before the flying pig concept emerged. 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, 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.

A second brewery logo was later developed to support the flying pig logo. This mark borrowed from the work of optical illusion illustrator M.C. Escher to create a capital A logo for Absurd that twisted and rolled over itself in space and defied traditional 3D perspective.