Good Things Brewing Co.

Agency: Horse
Location: UK
Project Type: Produced
Packaging Contents: Beer

Horse designs branding and packaging for world’s most sustainable brewery

Design studio Horse has created the brand identity and packaging for Good Things Brewing, a new Sussex based company with a goal to build the world’s most sustainable brewery. Which means a target to be completely energy-efficient, off-grid with everything recycled and reused from water to grain.

“The way beer is brewed is really inefficient. And in the UK, we brew a lot of beer. A lot. Raw ingredients are shipped in from all over the world, leftover grain is recycled inefficiently and huge amounts of energy and water are wasted. Our planet simply can’t sustain it” comments Sam Robinson, founder and creative lead at Good Things Brewing Co.

Robinson, photographer, was inspired to create the brand after learning about the environmental impact of the beer-making process and the lack of public knowledge of this outside of the brewing industry.

Having worked together with Horse on numerous projects, Robinson goes on to explain “It was therefore important our branding break the traditional craft beer aesthetic. We crucially wanted to move away from the ‘skater’ graphics and boys club feeling, and create something more closely linked to the natural world, appealing importantly to both men and women. I have a great working relationship with Horse, and knew their ideas driven approach to design would nail the brief.”

In answer to the brief, Horse has created a core icon which conveys the brand’s products, combined with a feeling of nature and peace. A linear, graphically styled bird, whose tail feathers mimic an ear of barley, is used boldly across each of the variants. This is paired with a soft colour palette on a textured matt paper label for a natural and tactile feeling in the hand.

“As part of the brand’s offer to spread the good word, Good Things Brewing also creates bespoke brews for other brands or events”, says Ian Firth, creative partner at Horse. “So an important part of our task when considering the packaging and branding, was how to give the collaborative edition cans their own personality, whilst still clearly identifiable as part of the Good Things brand.”

The solution is a double faced can, one side of which is dedicated to an icon which represents the brand or event. Firth goes on to add ”each illustration being executed in the same distinctive linear style so it remains a clear part of the brand’s portfolio.”

Even the brewery’s spent grain is dried and milled so that it can be reused to make flour. “We’ve designed the world’s first low-energy, large-scale, solar-powered dehydrator to dry and mill our spent grain. We then mill it using a traditional stone mill to produce incredible wholemeal flour, putting this otherwise wasted ingredient to deliciously good use”, comments Robinson.

Horse has considered the brand holistically, ensuring they tell their story in as sustainable a way as possible. Wooden bar pump badges give a unique and natural look in bars, and the brand book is single colour, printed on recycled paper using vegetable-based ink and an eco-printing press. And whilst fully recyclable, Horse hopes the beautiful monochromatic design encourages readers to spread Good Things and pass it on.

Horse brings to life some rather startling statistics with their illustrative brand deck. “It takes 94 trees a day to absorb the carbon footprint of just one pint, and the UK beer industry produces 2.16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. That’s like driving a double-decker bus around the world 108,121 times.” Robinson explains. Good reason enough to make some big changes to the brewing industry.