Pelican Brewing Company had a 20-year brand that needed a refresh to keep up with the competitive beverage landscape. We tackled the challenge of uniting the Pelican team to create one vision for the future of the brand beginning with discovery sessions and branding workshops to explore their values, missions, goals and overall identity.

Armed with this inspiration, rich history and understanding of their connection to their sense of place, I created a new visual direction, refreshed logo, graphics system, voice and tone, and overall look and feel, that I structured, trained, and maintained. However, the real fun came in implementation, especially when I dove in on applying this visual to packaging. I built a new design system that allowed our 6-packs to pop off the busy beer shelves, with a bright, bold, and typographic focused design. With hierarchy being the most crucial part in breaking the monotony on the retail shelves, this system of key elements provided not only structure but approachability with style descriptors and tasting notes as the priority features to make it easy for every level of experienced beer buyer to find what they’re looking for.

With these design systems in place I had the capacity to keep up with the ever-changing landscape and need for fast decision-making, with the ability to name, craft a story behind it and create the long list of packaging, marketing and retail assets needed for every new beer, in record time. With the efficiency to pitch new seasonal, fresh designs – often, before the end of the concept meetings, I was able to help scale and work directly with the Pelican R&D Team to bring their vision to life. I delivered assets in style, ready for production as well as appearances in their seasonal and styled, monthly photoshoots to create content for all of our platforms. Within 5 years of this refresh, they were able to to grow from 5K barrels to 50k barrels, have the number one IPA in Oregon, and become a regional household name.

Brand Audit, Branding, Package Design, Print Collateral, Media Content, Vendor Relations, Brand Management, Brand Strategy, Creative Direction

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Team: Pelican Brewing Leadership Team and Jeanie Coates, Coates Kokes CEO

Featured Photography by: Tim Jacks, Chapin Hemmingway and Alex Pallas