Supple Studio’s new branding for Somer Valley Brewing, a craft brewer born on a Somerset farm, celebrates the local environment and hard graft that go into its products.

“With so much of the beer making process happening on the farm, we decided to make the brand assets there too,” says Jamie Ellul, creative director at the Bath-based agency.

The creative team worked with Simon Spilsbury to create textures used throughout the visual identity. They took rubbings and etchings of objects like tractor wheels, fence posts, and hay bales – including a print created by driving over a strip of paper in a tractor – which have been used to make colourful, splodgy graphics that bring character to brand assets.

Elsewhere, the extensive new palette of bright primary colours and muted secondary tones are all inspired, in name and appearance, by natural cues – from specific varieties of crops, flora and fauna to earthy matter like charcoal and soil. The locality is again referred to in the newly named drinks range, with names like Snug, Rolling Hills, Bolt and Hayes.

These are joined by Spilsbury’s series of charming illustrations depicting farmers and animals in surprising scenes, which have the rough, scratchy personality of Quentin Blake’s beloved drawings. While the studio developed a lightly tweaked logo, the characters are the stars of the new identity, appearing across glasses, packaging, signage, merchandise and more. They also come to life in animated form, as shown in a series of social media assets created as part of the new identity.

The new typeface is a warm serif with softened edges helping to drive home the friendly feel of the identity, an ethos captured in its new tagline: ‘From our land, to your hand.’

supplestudio.com