Responses by Switch

Background: Founded by Patrick Lively, a leader in the Oklahoma brewing scene, Lively Beerworks began with a simple mission: to make staple beers in excellent fashion. With the local craft beer landscape heavily revolving around busy, illustrative branding, we aligned the identity to that of the beer itself: clean, crisp and iconic. The result is a streamlined, but visually bold brand that has proven to stand out on shelf ahead of its competition. The photography was done by photographer Brandon Smith.

Reasoning: The client was focused and strategic with his goals which helped immensely in the art direction. Oklahoma has a few experimental breweries with international fame. Lively Beerworks, while capable of that level of craft, wanted something lofty but simple—to be every local’s “fridge beer” by creating an excellent version of common beer styles like lager and IPA. We knew the brand should be just as straightforward as its approach to the product itself. With that knowledge, we knew that the brand was going to be systemized and utilitarian in layout.

Challenges: Not losing the true personality of the people behind Lively. While they were all in on the streamlined approach to stand out on shelf, there was fear that it would be cold and unwelcoming. The saturated color scheme offsets the more dialed back layouts and speaks to the joyful nature of the Lively team.

Favorite details: The system we built. The Lively team is small but has lofty goals. This means they have to do a lot with a little and we wanted to design a system that they could flex up and down with. At its core, the brand is a color-banding system with one weight of one typeface. This has helped the Lively team create materials on the fly that remain consistent and beautiful without having to call us with every need.

Time constraints: There was a timeline we had to meet for the on-shelf launch of the first two beers. This meant that we didn’t know what the style or specific details were for the other seven or eight beers they’d eventually make. This also played a big part in the systemic approach. If we had done a more one-off illustrative approach, the costs for the client to continually create original work for each can would’ve mounted quickly and the timelines would’ve been a mess. The color blocking system allows for quick additions to the core brand and product line.

Anything new: We learned more about beer brewing, packaging and distribution than we ever imagined. One of our cornerstone beliefs at Switch is that we envelope ourselves as much as possible in the industry context of a project. We work on brands from a wide range of industries, so this leads to random knowledge of industries we’d never otherwise know.

switch.is