Highside Brewing Branding Refresh

High­side Brew­ing came to us in ear­ly 2021 for some graph­ic design guid­ance. They were begin­ning to ramp up their brew­ing pro­duc­tion to expand dis­tri­b­u­tion through­out the Front Range of Col­orado. We worked on a num­ber of 16 ounce tall­boy can designs but also took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to refresh their brand iden­ti­ty. A refresh was select­ed because we did­n’t want to re-invent the wheel and start from scratch, but there were a num­ber of ele­ments in their brand­ing that just did­n’t work. A crit­i­cal review of the old design showed us that we could increase the sense-of-place feel of the mark to bet­ter reflect “Col­orado” as well as posi­tion­ing them as out­door enthu­si­asts who also make beer.

We added a bet­ter con­cept of water in the low­er part of the brand­ing, with curvy lines ref­er­enc­ing the undu­lat­ing our state’s rivers; this was espe­cial­ly impor­tant as the High­side founder is a raft­ing guide. We also replaced the 2nd I in “HIGHSIDE” with a raft pad­dle, as a sec­ondary ref­er­ence to this.

While the over­all brand­ing is sim­i­lar to what High­side already had, we were able to refine their brand­ing to make it so much more pro­fes­sion­al. The logo works great in full col­or, and in 1 and 2 col­ors, and with gra­di­ents. Their brand­ing is meant to be very flex­i­ble col­or-wise, which is some­thing we also rein­forced in the sub­se­quent pack­ag­ing. We cre­at­ed a spe­cial­ized brand­ing pack­age for the client that con­tains a wide vari­ety of dif­fer­ent logo uses and is sup­ple­ment­ed by a Brand Stan­dards Man­u­al that explains how and where to use the brand­ing in the future.