• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • About Craft Brewing Business

Craft Brewing Business

Professional Insight, Unfiltered

Craft Brewing Business Craft Brewing Business
  • News
  • Business & Marketing
  • Packaging & Distribution
  • Equipment & Systems
  • Ingredients & Supplies
  • Webinars & White Papers
  • News
  • Business & Marketing
  • Ingredients & Supplies
  • Packaging & Distribution
  • Equipment
  • Webinars & White Papers
  • COVID-19

Branding vs. graphic design for startup breweries

January 16, 2017Cody Fague and Isaac Arthur

Graphic design is an important element for telling your story, but without brand strategy, you won’t know what that story is.

This is an excerpt from CODO Design’s newly published Craft Beer Branding Guide. CODO has spent years working with startup craft breweries on naming, branding and positioning, interactive design and package design, and they have gathered their experience into a comprehensive guide to help startup breweries navigate the entire branding process. Check it out and learn how to make your brewery stand out.

We recently sat down with a brewery in planning to discuss their concept and the possibility of working together. They had a logo, a nice one actually, but no deeper understanding of their brewery’s story. And through the course of our conversation they mentioned something very smart:

“We feel like we went through a design process, but not a true branding process.”

And we wanted to write a bit about this today because we see some misconceptions surrounding these concepts a lot in the craft beer world. We’ll preface this by acknowledging that the difference between branding and graphic design may seem like semantics, but there’s a big difference — from a budget and timeline standpoint, a cultural standpoint, and maybe most importantly, what you’ll get from one versus the other.

Graphic Design is the creation of visual elements like your logo, packaging, print materials, etc. It’s the act of communicating ideas visually.

Branding is the development of core brand values, compelling messages, positioning and your story itself. It’s framing your brewery’s ‘why’ and the telling of that story across every point of interaction you have with your customers.

While graphic design is an inherent step in the branding process, without brand strategy informing it, it becomes a surface-level activity.

There’s more value in branding because it rallies your team and your customers behind one solid idea while differentiating you from all the other breweries in your market. And if done properly, the graphic design portion of the process will serve as the culmination of the branding process, when your messaging, positioning and story make the jump from conceptual to visual.

If you’re opening a brewery, do yourself a favor and go through a proper branding exercise. It’ll set you up for long-term success.

This column was provided by the folks at CODO Design, a five-man branding firm based in Indianapolis, IN. They’ve spent years working with startup craft breweries on naming, branding and positioning, responsive web design, and package design. They’ve gathered their experience into a comprehensive Craft Beer Branding Guide to help startup breweries navigate the entire branding process. Check it out at www.craftbeerbrandingguide.com.

Want to learn how to brand your brewery? Start with our favorite branding books
Environmental design: Turn your brewery into an immersive brand experience
codo-big-lug-canteen cbb crop
Defining your brewery’s brand personality: If your brewery were a person, who would it be and why?
Learn how to define your brewery’s core brand values

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Latest News

  • Allagash Brewing makes five-year commitment to help immigrant women in Maine
  • Top five states for beer production and taproom consumption
  • Our Mutual Friend ready to celebrate 11 years in business with limited edition glassware, new beers
  • ‘Experience creates consumption’ tops BrewLogix list of craft beer trends to watch

Sign up for our newsletter

unsubscribe from list

Most Popular Today

Recent Features

  • craft beer neon marketing sign‘Experience creates consumption’ tops BrewLogix list of craft beer trends to watch
    November 30, 2023
  • BarTrack Smart Draft SystemBarTrack launches The Smart Draft System, teasing real-time beverage quality analytics and automated inventory management
    November 28, 2023
  • Hand of bartender pouring a large lager beer in tapOn-premise report: 2023 Thanksgiving eve insights from BeerBoard
    November 28, 2023
  • Fifty West Brewing ice skating rink family skating cbb cropPhotos! Fifty West Brewing launches upgraded ice rink in Cincinnati with a curling league
    November 27, 2023
  • nitro stout lawsons finestLawson’s Finest cans its Nitro Stout and other beers to know this week from SweetWater, Brooklyn Brewery and more
    November 16, 2023
  • DARKNESS-DAY-2023 guy breathing fireSurly Brewing’s Darkness Day was pretty metal (just watch this video)
    November 16, 2023

Footer

  • Email Newsletter Sign Up
  • About Craft Brewing Business
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise on Craft Brewing Business
  • Media Kit Download
  • Privacy and Terms

© 2023 · CBB Media LLC