Big Drop: ten years, and bolder for it

I designed Big Drop’s original identity in 2016. Back then, alcohol-free beer was something you drank because you had to, not because you wanted to — and most of it looked the part. Big Drop set out to prove that alcohol-free beer could go toe-to-toe with the real thing. The brand had to look like it meant it.

In 2019 I refreshed it. Then, for the tenth anniversary, I went back in again.

The brief was short: bolder and cleaner, without leaving behind any of what got Big Drop here. That drop has been doing the work for ten years. Throwing it away just to look new would have been vanity, not strategy.

Bolder, cleaner — and nothing from the last ten years left on the shelf.

The biggest change is in the logotype. Big Drop Brewing Co. became just Big Drop — two words do the job. And the name now sits on a subtle curve that follows the bottom of the drop. A straight line would have been tidier, but the curve does two jobs: it gives the drop a sense of weight, as if it’s pressing down on the name, and it gives the whole logotype movement and energy.

Cleaner meant taking things away everywhere else, too. The drop is one big, flat shape in one colour, filling most of the label. Everything else on the front has to earn its place: the beer’s name, Edgar, the calories and one claim about awards.

Craft beer isn’t just about the hop profile, the IBU or how long the head brewer’s beard is (nice to know, if that’s your bag). Alcohol-free beer in particular has a habit of taking itself far too seriously.

Big Drop goes the other way. Its six values — bold, honest, playful, vibrant, determined and open-minded — are about energy, not earnestness. Bold, but never Shouty-McShoutface about it. The identity has to carry that before anyone’s opened a can.

Where others might say something is too much, we say it’s not enough.

That line from the playbook is the test for everything: the colour, the photography, the packs.

I drew these out after the fact, from the playbook and the work itself: the purpose, the manifesto, the values, the tribes and the lines on the packs. Big Drop’s personality maps neatly onto four archetypes. The Jester and the Explorer lead; the Rebel and the Everyman add range, and keep the fun from drifting into smugness.

Every beer gets its own colourway, and they’re all one family. Each pack takes its beer’s base colour and pattern, with the drop and wordmark in its accent. Line them up and they read as a set; pick one up and it couldn’t be anything else.

The numbers sit on the front, where you’d look for them: never more than 0.5% ABV, and the calories per 100ml beside it — 3 in the Citrus IPA, 4 in the Lager.

Hover over a pack, or tap it, to see it from another angle.

Every beer has its own pair: a base colour that does three-quarters of the work and an accent that does the rest. Around them sits a brand palette of ten colours for anything that isn’t about one beer in particular — and when it is, a brand colour can sit beside the beer’s own to push the energy up.

They’re bright on purpose. Alcohol-free doesn’t have to mean muted.

Tap a chip to copy its hex code.

Each beer also has a pattern of its own — leaves for the Citrus IPA, rolling arcs for the Lager, stripes for the Pale Ale, swirls for the Milk Stout and woodgrain for the Brown Ale. They’re set tone-on-tone in the base colour, so they add texture and character without ever competing with the drop.

Big Drop lives on phones as much as on shelves, and a whole drop takes up a lot of room at the top of a post. So there’s a half-drop setup: the drop cut off by the top edge, with the name curving underneath it just as it does on the packs. It saves a lot of height and still reads as Big Drop at a glance. A version of it sits in the header of bigdropbrew.com, too.

The posts follow two recipes. Brand-led ones put a headline in the brand colours, with or without a photo. Beer-led ones wear a beer’s own colourway and pattern. Over video, the name goes on its own as a watermark.

Every pack carries Edgar, a roundel promising the beer inside will never be more than 0.5% ABV. There are versions for the UK and Europe, the USA and Australia, and none is ever printed smaller than 12mm across.

Why Edgar? Quoth the Raven: “Nevermore.”

(It’s the kind of joke you only get on the second look. That’s rather the point — the brand rewards a little attention, and doesn’t take itself too seriously while it does.)