Maiden Brewing Company – Lightspeed Lager

Design: James O'Connor
Location: New Zealand
Project Type: Produced
Client: Maiden Brewing Company
Product Launch Location: New Zealand
Packaging Contents: Beer
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Aluminium
Printing Process: Digital

Bringing a new world approach to the classic light lager style, Maiden brewery's Lightspeed Lager uses Canterbury-grown malted barley and maize infused with world-class New Zealand hops to bring you a lager that drinks light and crisp with refreshing notes of orange citrus and a smooth, thirst-quenching finish. The creative direction for the packaging of this beer references some of the classic American beer cues, with a heavy emphasis on typography with the words wrapping around one another to create a unique lockup set on a stark white can. Simple, clean, and punchy – much like the beer itself. The name leans more on the relatively short time it takes to create the beer rather than the more obvious science fiction tropes.

A beer can provides a real challenge for design as there is such a limited space to convey a lot of information as the endpoint of this can will be stacked face out on a shelf somewhere. With a long beer title such as 'Lightspeed Lager', this meant coming up with a creative solution to make sure this typography was the hero but was also clear and legible.

Maiden Brewing Company is a small brewery and blendery that focuses on wild, spontaneous, and mixed fermentation beer based in Wellington, New Zealand.

What's Unique?
The unique thing about this project is focusing more on a typography-lead design approach for the New Zealand market. This is not often what is seen on the craft beer shelf in this country.