One Beer Distributor to Rule Them All

Every project we take on is like our own child, and (like a good parent) we love all our chil­dren equally. But I must also con­fess, we really love beer. And the only thing better than vis­it­ing a com­pany ded­i­cated to great beer is vis­it­ing their ware­house filled with tow­er­ing cases of over 150 of the finest beers on the planet.

Most people don’t know this, but the beer in stores, restau­rants, and bars were not brought there by the beer com­pa­nies. Even though many beer com­pa­nies sell beer all over the world, the pro­mo­tion and deliv­ery of their beer is han­dled by local dis­trib­u­tors. In the world of these beer dis­trib­u­tors, there aren’t many that are bigger or better than Andrews Dis­trib­ut­ing Com­pany. Not only do they effi­ciently handle over 150 brands of beer from all over the world, they con­tin­u­ally look for ways to give better ser­vice to their retail­ers and fur­ther pro­mote their brands.

After over 25 years of suc­cess­ful busi­ness, Andrews Dis­trib­ut­ing Com­pany asked us to con­sult them on their first major re-​branding effort. When we looked that what they had and what their com­pany aspired to be, two major chal­lenges emerged:

First, Andrews has a long and proud his­tory full of tra­di­tional values. The old logos the com­pany had used were rel­a­tively con­ser­v­a­tive. We felt that the new brand should be modern and strik­ing, but were con­cerned any­thing that put them too far out­side the main­stream would con­tra­dict their cul­ture. The solu­tion was to present a spec­trum of logo ideas in sketch form. On the left, were the most con­cep­tual designs we could imag­ine and as you moved across the page the logos got less styl­ized and more tra­di­tional until the far right was simply an update of what they already had. This not only allowed us to explore lots of options, it gave us a great way to get a bear­ing on how much of a change the Andrews exec­u­tive team was up for.

Second, we wanted the new iden­tity to stand alone so that sup­pli­ers, retail­ers and the local com­mu­nity would start to rec­og­nize Andrews Dis­trib­ut­ing as “the com­pany that brings the beer.”  How­ever, at their present rate of growth, they will exceed 200 unique brands in the coming years. We admired their desire to fea­ture the brands they serve, but real­ized that adding another “beer-like” image to the mix would make it impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish Andrews in the crowd. It was also inevitable that if the Andrews logo drew on tra­di­tional beer logo imagery, it would tend to be very sim­i­lar to some of their brands and clash with others. In the end, it was Mike McGuire, the Andrews VP of Mar­ket­ing, that put logo solu­tion in per­spec­tive: “We are not a beer com­pany, we are a beer dis­trib­u­tor. Our iden­tity is not built on cel­e­brat­ing beer, it is built on great ser­vice to the people who make beer and the people who enjoy it.” From there the solu­tion was simple; build an iden­tity that focuses on Andrews as a team and simply acknowledge the prod­uct they deliver.

After lots of sketch­ing, exper­i­ment­ing, and pan­tone chip dig­ging, we had a few design direc­tions we felt proud to show. The final design has all the pedi­gree of a true pro­fes­sional. The idea came quickly, and quickly stood out from the other options. It also ties a con­cep­tual sketch we did in the begin­ning, to the arch­ing text layout that was used on many of the more tra­di­tional designs. We’re find­ing that the more we use it, the more we love look­ing at it. That’s a good thing since its cur­rently being stitched on about 300 uni­forms and stuck on 200 vehicles.

For me, as a designer, what is most pleas­ing is the level of client inter­ac­tion in the process. This isn’t a fin­ished prod­uct we deliv­ered shrink-​wrapped, nor is it a com­mis­sioned design based entirely on the clients vision. This work rep­re­sents a true col­lab­o­ra­tion between two sides that were will­ing to listen and learn. I believe the fin­ished prod­uct is better than any­thing we could have done with­out Andrews’ input. I also believe they see this as the iden­tity they devel­oped, not the iden­tity they bought.

As a ser­vice com­pany, our first objec­tive is making sure our clients are pleased with the process and the results we deliver. We also work very hard to make sure those results are some­thing we are proud to sign our name to. When our indus­try peers rec­og­nize our work… well, that’s icing on the cake. We are very pleased to announce that the logo devel­oped for the new Andrews Iden­tity will be included in this year’s DSVC Pro­fes­sional Show fea­tur­ing the best of design in our area.

So, in clos­ing, on behalf of Andrews and Mar­ble­head I raise a glass and say: here’s to a better appre­ci­a­tion of beer, and a better appre­ci­a­tion of the folks that bring it to you!