Bells Beach Brewing

ART DIRECTION
BRAND DESIGN
PACKAGING DESIGN

Background

Bells Beach Brewing is built on belief and capability. Founders Jono and Adam were inspired by the landscape of Bells Beach and the Surfcoast of Australia but uninspired by the beer they found in the location back in the day. They set out to change this by partnering high quality craft beer of different styles with a novel surf inspired branding idea for the beer.

Jono recognised how rapidly the craft beer industry is growing in Australia and wanted to harness this enthusiasm into a business venture and combine two of his passions – craft beer brewing and surfing. He approached me to create a new brand based around this combination of surfing and craft beer. Bells beach is an iconic surf-break near the town of Torquay in Victoria, Australia. The Bells beach pro is the longest running surf contest in Australia and is held at Bells beach every Easter. Due to this is it is well known across Australia. Jono felt this was the perfect name and inspiration for his brewery

Process

I followed my custom approach to brand development by conducting meetings, performing brand research and analysing the competition. This gave us a great sense of art direction and enabled me to develop a clear design direction.

Three options we presented to Jono for consideration, each style followed the same theme – surfing, craft beer (represented by hops) and the infamous bell that us used at the surf competitions. I felt a more illustrative style would work best for this brand and explored a number of different options. An off blue/green colour or teal was a natural choice for the primary brand colour and allowed us to pair it with other brighter colours for different brews going forward.

There was one clear option that stood out to Jono as being his favourite. We refined this logo until we felt it was complete. We also explored some different typography but settled on a sans serif typeface that isn’t too generic and has some personality that will give the brand a more fun tone of voice inline with our overall brand strategy.

Conclusion

I ended up creating a lot of of printed material for Bells Beach Brewing, everything from surf boards, posters, business cards to bottle labels and boxes. They’ve used the logo across many different mediums from online to laser wood cutouts to brewery signage and to vehicle wraps. Bells Beach Brewing is a truly inspiring brand due to the great work of its founders and has since grown to have it’s own brewery and tap house which has been a massive success. Check out their instagram to see how rapidly their brand is developing.