How to Make a Brewery Logo (+ Brewery Logo Examples to Inspire you)

If it feels like everywhere you look, there’s a new brewery popping up, there’s a reason for that. The American beer industry has ballooned to a $120.6 billion business and is expected to grow 4.77% every year through 2027. Independent breweries account for about 13% of that market, while it’s estimated that by 2025, 47% of spending and 25% of volume consumption of beer will be attributed to bars, restaurants, and breweries.

As an alcohol-fueled business, breweries may have slightly better profit margins than other restaurants, but high startup costs and rampant competition make it exceedingly difficult for breweries to stand out from the crowd.

Like in the coffee business, brand loyalty goes a long way toward a brewery’s viability. With so many options to choose from, you want your customers to not only love your beer but love your brand enough to both visit your brick-and-mortar brewery and buy your beer off the shelf. That’s where a brewery logo can be very effective.

In this article, you will learn how to make a great brewery logo that gets customers excited about your brand and keeps them buying your products.

Why is a brewery logo important?

Breweries aren’t as readily identified by their logo as, say, fast food restaurants, but a logo is an important part of establishing a brand identity. Given that craft beer is such a point of regional pride, a great logo carves out a brewery’s niche within the local brewing community.

Beer drinkers have their preferred brands. Certainly, taste is the most important factor for most drinkers, but great branding is one of the best ways to stand out on shelves and resonate with an existing customer base. It’s all about acquiring new customers and turning loyal customers into adherents.

Many beer shoppers browse their liquor store’s selection by the label on the can; a great logo is the first step to getting them to read the label, leading to an ultimate decision to purchase.

What to consider when making a brewery logo

When it comes to making a brewery logo, there are a few important things to keep in mind.

Budget

Opening a brewery can cost anywhere from $500,000 - $1.5 million. With costs like that, budget will always be important. A logo is going to be a central part of your brewery’s brand, so it’s not something you should pinch pennies on, but it’s also a marketing expense you might not be quite ready to make.

Unless you know a designer personally, you’ll have to hire one or an agency. Depending on the designer and the scope of the project, logo design could cost as little as $2 or more than $2,500. Independent designers and online brewery logo makers are more budget-friendly options than hiring an agency.

Timeline

If your brewery is gearing up to start distributing, branding is absolutely essential. You can’t go to market with blank cans. As such, you must consider the timeline for your logo design project.

With an online logo maker, you could make a logo you like in a matter of minutes. Working with a designer or agency could take between 4-6 weeks. Knowing your timeline will help you craft a budget for the project. The more money you have to spend, the more time and revision rounds you can ask of designers, so the budget and timeline are closely related.

Customer base

When you started your brewery, you probably had an idea of your target customers and the niche you would fill in the market. Those target customers are the ones you aim to please most with your brewery logo. But you also want to create a logo that’s interesting and enticing enough to get new customers to try your beer.

You must understand what customers like about your brewery and beer in the first place. There are so many breweries out there, it’s going to be hard to make your brand stick out. Maybe something about your brewery’s concept or mission makes sense to convey in a logo. Your logo may relate to your love of beer, like San Diego’s Stone Brewing’s gargoyle that seeks to protect the brewing mission from evil spirits. There might Maybe the logo is already in your name, like Woburn, MA’s Mighty Squirrel. There are a lot of directions you can go to create a logo that your current customers love and new customers will gravitate towards.

How to make a brewery logo

A logo design project may follow many variations of workflow, but this is a good guide to follow for your brewery logo design.

Start with your brand

Any brewery logo should be tightly aligned with the overall branding and appeal to your customer base. So, start with a wide lens, asking some big questions.

Think about how you came up with your brewery’s name, about your signature beers, and your company’s mission. Are there any interesting nods to your roots or community that you could incorporate into a logo? What are the design elements you care about in your brewery, cans, or packaging? It’s all about figuring out what makes your brand unique and different.

Build your vision

You might not have the artistic expertise to sketch out a rough idea of what you want your logo to look like. At the very least, though, you should be able to articulate a few ideas. Look at some other logos to get an idea of design elements you like, whether it’s a character, specific fonts, or colors that you think resonate with your brand.

Using an online logo maker is a good way to find some inspiration, too. (Just make sure not to download or print anything until you’re satisfied and ready to pay.)

Choose a logo design avenue

Going back to the questions of budget and timeline, choosing a logo design avenue will have a big impact on the overall project process. There are a few things you can do.

Hire a professional graphic designer

Professional designers will charge at least an hourly rate of $24 or more depending on where you’re located. Agencies will certainly charge more.

This is the most expensive avenue, but it will also most likely be the easiest for you. A good designer can help you work through concepts to figure out what will and won’t work in a logo. They’ll also help you fill some of the gaps to incorporate the logo in your overall branding, from your cans to the brewery dining experience.

It could take up to six weeks to settle on a logo and get all the files you need, but as long as you pick a good designer, you’re likely to be happy with the result.

Do it yourself

Doing things yourself is usually the most budget-friendly avenue in the restaurant industry. If you have a little bit of design experience and a clear vision, you might actually enjoy making your brewery logo yourself. It will probably be the most time-intensive option to digitize and produce the right files for all of your branding, but it may be the simplest way to see your vision through.

Use a template or generator

Tools like Canva, Looka, and Themeisle Logo Maker let you share a little bit of inspiration and use the power of artificial intelligence to create a range of original logo options. Many tools also offer templates to work off of to create the right brewery logo for your business.

Logo design makers will be cheaper and faster than professional human designers, but they don’t offer the same flexibility to try new ideas and change very specific components.

Edit and iterate (and get other people’s opinions!) 

Of course, you have great taste, but before hitching your brewery to a new logo, make sure other people love it as much as you do. Most importantly, make sure your customers love it as much as you do. If you consider the best restaurant logos, they’ve all gotten customer stamps of approval before going live.

Audit your staff, friends, and a random sample of customers with the new logo and invite feedback. You might find that the design is too subtle, or colors aren’t quite landing the way you hoped, or the font isn’t as clear to others as it is to you. Plus, showing the logos to others will give you an opportunity to identify if it’s treading too closely to competitors.

Copyright and trademark

Trademarking your logo is as simple as Application, Examination, Publication, and Registration with the United States Patent Office (USPO). That way, scammers and copycats can’t attempt to profit off of your hard-earned brewery logo.

If you don’t already have a lawyer, you can hire a company like LegalZoom to handle the particulars of copyrighting and trademarking.

What makes a great logo?

A great logo to me may not be a great logo to you. That’s the beauty of choice, and in the beer world, there is a whole lot of choice. Really, a great logo is one that makes you open the fridge door to look at the can or order off an unfamiliar tap at the bar. Basically, it both resonates with your existing customer base and looks interesting enough to make a new customer try your beer.

A few cool examples:

• Red Hook: Seattle’s Red Hook Brewery’s bold red and mustard colors look like they shouldn’t work together, but that’s just what it is… bold. The logo captures your attention, while the understated, angular design recalls the sprawling forests of the Pacific Northwest.

• Maine Beer Company: Maine Beer Company makes high-end beer. As such, it makes sense that its logo keeps it simple. It’s about the beer, after all. 

• Night Shift Brewing: Night Shift Brewing’s trademark owl is visible all over the Greater Boston Area. The creative, slightly kooky owl logo befits the brewery’s laidback vibe, while the company makes great use of the logo on brewery front doors, cans, and packaging. If you see the owl, you know Night Shift beer is nearby.

Tips for making a great logo

To guide your brewery logo design process, think of the following things.

Make it clear and easy to read

You don’t have a lot of space on a beer can to make an impression. Logos should be easy to read and identify.

Keep it true to your brand

Beer brands have a little more license to be creative with their branding since the industry is so saturated in zaniness, but you still want your brewery logo to make sense — or at least have a story. If you specialize in vegan beer, a cow might not make the best logo.

Make it memorable

The craft beer scene has exploded in recent years, so it’s hard to make a memorable logo that stays in customers’ brains. That’s at least part of the reason why so many beer brands steer toward characters, like Mighty Squirrel and Night Shift.

Avoid being too trendy

Yes, beer is trendy. The brewery scene is about as trendy as it gets these days, but you want your brewery to have wide appeal. A brewery logo shouldn’t feature obscure references, ostentatiousness, or wacky, indecipherable fonts.

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To understand how crowded the craft beer scene is these days, all you have to do is go to your local liquor store. Every brewery has a different logo, and you’re just not going to remember them all. The best brewery logo is one that your current customers love, which can give you the confidence that future customers will love it, too.

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