Brand identity for Concept Brewing & Distilling

Concept Brewing & Distilling · Christchurch Craft Brewery · Visual Identity / Can Labels / Tap Badges / Merch / Web · FMCG / Hospitality

A Sailor-Jerry-inspired identity rollout for Concept Brewing & Distilling — a Christchurch craft brewery known for clean lagers, punchy IPAs, rich stouts and a confident range of curveballs.

Concept Brewing & Distilling is a Christchurch craft brewery known for clean lagers, punchy IPAs, rich stouts and a confident range of curveballs for the adventurous. The brand sits deliberately between old-school craftsmanship and modern edge, and Obvious worked on the full identity rollout that carries that positioning across cans, taproom, merch, web and the cold cabinet.

The Brief

The NZ craft beer category has matured to the point where the visual conventions are tight: variant-coloured cans, retro-style typography, an over-design tendency that fights for attention rather than creating it. Concept needed an identity that read as confident and grounded — a brand that feels honest, local, and unmistakably its own — without becoming another shouty brewery on a crowded shelf.

The Strategic Decision

• Sailor-Jerry-inspired aesthetic. The identity drew from old-school tattoo-flash discipline: bold, pared-back, character-driven. A grammar that could hold beer names like ‘Cold Gregg’, ‘Le Lait Noir’ and ‘Cyril Stoatgobbler’ without losing seriousness.
• Beer-name personality, not slogan-noise. Each brew got a character name that felt like an old friend rather than a marketing tagline. The system was built to make these names the point.
• Built for the FMCG line-up. Cold IPA, Milk Stout, Lager, Pale Ale, Hazy Pale Ale, NZ Pilsner, Hazy Lemonade, Ginger Beer — the system had to scale across the full range without losing distinction between SKUs.

The Rollout

Full identity rollout: beer mats, can labels, hoodie and t-shirt merch, posters, tap badges and the website. Each touchpoint built around the same Sailor-Jerry-inspired discipline: bold marks, considered typography, and a tone of voice that sounds like the brewery actually does.

Why this kind of work matters

FMCG brand work in a crowded category is one of the harder briefs in commercial design. The brands that win are the ones with conviction at the cold cabinet — not the ones that shout the loudest. Concept Brewing is one of our clearest references for how restraint, character and disciplined typography produce a craft brand that holds its own at scale.

Outcomes

What this enables for Concept Brewing & Distilling

• Conviction at the cold cabinet. Sailor-Jerry-inspired discipline — bold, pared-back, character-driven — a brand that doesn’t shout to be heard on a crowded shelf.
• Character-named SKUs across the range. Cold Gregg, Le Lait Noir, Cyril Stoatgobbler — each beer with a name that feels like an old friend, held inside one coherent system.
• A system that scales across 8+ SKUs. Cold IPA, Milk Stout, Lager, Pale Ale, Hazy Pale Ale, NZ Pilsner, Hazy Lemonade, Ginger Beer — SKU distinction without breaking the brand.
• Full rollout across every surface. Beer mats, can labels, hoodie and t-shirt merch, posters, tap badges and website — one discipline, one voice, one cold cabinet.

Launching or repositioning a craft FMCG brand?

Obvious partners with craft food, beverage and FMCG brands across Aotearoa — designing identity systems that hold conviction at the shelf, not noise. If that’s the shape of your work, we’d love to talk.