Vocation Brewery Rebrand

Design: Robot Food
Project Type: Produced
Client: Vocation Brewery
Location: Leeds
Packaging Contents: Craft Beer
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Can

Robot Food helps strengthen Vocation Brewery’s position on supermarket shelves and brings the focus back to the brand’s driving force – great beer.

Vocation Brewery asked long-time collaborator and brand design agency, Robot Food to revisit and re-establish the brand that they created in 2015, to embrace and adapt to Vocation’s huge success since launch.

“We may have scaled up but we’ve never sold out, now we’re in supermarkets people forget that we’re still a small team making beer from the same brewery in Hebden Bridge. We are proof you can get bigger and better, we’re proud to be putting our beer in the hands of more people. It’s time to remind people where we come from and what we’re made of,” says Vocation Brewery’s founder John Hickling.

Through Robot Food’s strategic process, the team explored and revisited the Vocation brand to reassess its positioning and understand how the craft market has shifted since its creation. Zoe Harper, Strategy Director at Robot Food has said: “When we first worked with Vocation, craft was in its infancy. Since then, the industry has commoditised the ‘craft’ label. For Vocation, it’s never been about following trends or conforming to stereotypes but about brewing brilliant beer that people want to drink and keep coming back to.”

Chris Shuttleworth, Senior Designer at Robot Food explains: “We found that the individual beers were recognisable but the brand was not. So, we introduced a new architecture for stronger brand presence and amplified the brand mark to make Vocation more of a beacon on shelf. For the core range we harked back to Vocation’s humble beginnings and printed the look of a label straight onto the cans. We simplified the flavourful illustrations, drawing attention to the product names of Vocation’s signature, punchy brews.”

Vocation knew that they needed to do more than just keep up with demand to retain their challenger status, so the team developed a more strategic approach to special releases. With a more regular supply of specials to supermarkets and a monthly release initiative to independents, Vocation constantly offer something special to those seeking out new brews. Shuttleworth has said: “The new architecture gives us a solid structure on which to get creative with the special releases. We can now design to reflect the innovative characteristics of each individual beer, offering something visually different whilst staying within a strong and recognisable framework.”

Keep an eye out for Vocation’s one of a kind monthly specials and find the rebrand of the core range in taprooms, bars and supermarkets now.