Making Mead Mainstream
Stuck in a world of mythologies and regional stories, mead was inaccessible to the mainstream. We transformed their identity from local meadery to national drinks brand.
BRAND IDENTITY | POSITIONING | TYPOGRAPHY | PACKAGING | STYLE GUIDE
The Concept
The Impact
The new design has been well received at various festivals and events across the UK, as well as featuring in The Grocer, bringing growth audiences into the world of mead.
Positive Change
We wanted to reflect core elements of the business and process that owners Kit and Matt had developed: bees were of course central to the purpose of the brand – not only caring for them, but looking to protect and grow numbers as an essential part of nature’s ecosystem; secondly, the craft and care involved in developing an ancient methodology to create something really accessible and easy drinking; and finally, the juicy, tasty flavour options in the range.
Our design approach looked to reflect this sense of traditional craft with modern thinking.
We used the creative skills of illustration, lino-cutting and printing to produce something completely bespoke for the brand, all developed by our internal studio team.
Recreated digitally, the individual linocut hexagons created energetic patterns representing the natural world, bees and the ingredients in the drinks. These became core assets for the brand world, appearing on packaging as well as off-pack.
A carefully crafted colour palette brought this craft to life in the brand world, allowing easy range navigation and instantly taking the brand from traditional olde worlde mead, to a space of refreshing flavours and social occasions.
The flexibility of the brand hierarchy, assets and guidelines has been demonstrated as we rolled out the new look and feel from sparkling meads to new product ranges including soft drinks and honey beers.
