What do India, Germany, Australia and America have in common?

In this case, Titanic Brewery.

Titanic came to us with an idea for a range of special edition beers inspired by different parts of the world. Different beer styles. Different hops. Different destinations. All sitting under one bigger idea: Brewed for the Journey.

Which gave us a lovely design problem.

How do you make every beer feel like somewhere new, while making absolutely sure people still know it’s a Titanic beer?

Same Ship. Different Journey.

With limited editions, there’s always a temptation to go completely wild with every new release.

And creatively, that’s great fun.

Commercially, not always so clever.

If every beer looks like it came from a different brewery, you’re making the customer start from scratch every time. All the recognition and trust you’ve already earned disappears just when it could be helping you make the sale.

So we created a structure that could stay recognisably Titanic while changing considerably from beer to beer.

The ship sits firmly at the centre. Around it, we built a flexible identity that could accommodate different colours, illustrations, names, beer styles and destinations.

The result is a range where every beer gets its own personality, without anyone having to squint at the pump clip to work out who brewed it.

A Round -The-World Trip From The Bar

Once we had the structure, we could have some fun with the destinations.

Maidan Run heads east to India, with a Session IPA and the Taj Mahal sitting proudly above the design. Its name adds another little layer to the journey too, playing on maidan – a word of Persian origin widely used across the Indian subcontinent for an open space or gathering ground.

Road Trip takes an American Pale Ale west, complete with the Golden Gate Bridge. Wunderlust travels north to Germany with a Kölsch-style beer and a suitably German scene. Long Haul makes the rather longer trip south to Australia.

Each has its own colour palette and illustrations, but they’re deliberately built from the same visual ingredients.

So, lined up together, they look like a collection.

Seen individually, they still look like Titanic.

Simple idea. Quite a lot of thought behind making it look that simple.

Because Nobody Wants Homework With Their Pint

There’s another job packaging and pump clip design has to do.

It has to help people choose.

That’s particularly important with special editions, where the customer might be looking at a beer name they’ve never seen before, a style they don’t normally drink or a brewery release they know won’t be around forever.

You don’t want them standing at the bar trying to decipher it.

The beer name takes centre stage. Style and ABV are easy to spot. Colour separates one release from another. The destination imagery gives each beer an immediate personality.

And Titanic’s branding holds everything together.

Within a few seconds, you’ve got the important bits.

What is it? Who made it? Is it my sort of thing?

Then comes the only really difficult decision: pint or half?

Not Just Designed For A Pump Clip

Of course, a beer brand rarely gets the luxury of appearing in one perfectly controlled format.

This range needed to work across pump clips, cans, bottles and everything else Titanic needed to throw at it.

That’s why we weren’t just designing individual pieces of artwork. We were building a system.

The core elements can expand, contract and rearrange without losing the character of the range. That makes introducing another destination much easier too. Titanic doesn’t need to reinvent the idea every time a new special edition is brewed.

There’s already a recognisable world for the next beer to join.

And that matters. Good design should make life easier after we’ve finished designing it, not create another problem for someone to solve six months later.

Then A Few Other Breweries Joined The Trip

The system also needed enough flexibility for collaborations.

And that’s where things got particularly interesting.

For Wainfleet, Titanic’s collaboration with Batemans, the design changes noticeably to accommodate Batemans’ own established identity. It’s different from the main travel range, but the Titanic ship and overall construction keep it connected.

Then there’s Gulp!, created with Tiny Rebel.

Subtle, it isn’t.

Tiny Rebel’s much more playful personality comes charging into the design, giving the beer a completely different feel while Titanic’s visual framework quietly keeps everything in order underneath.

Which is exactly what a flexible identity should do.

Consistency doesn’t mean making everything look the same.

It means knowing which bits need to stay the same so you can have some fun with everything else.

Something Worth Looking Out For

There’s a commercial advantage to creating a special edition range that actually feels like a range.

Once somebody has tried one, the next becomes familiar enough to recognise but different enough to be interesting.

That’s useful.

Instead of every launch having to fight for attention completely on its own, each new beer can benefit from what came before it. The distinctive colours and destination illustrations create shelf and bar presence, while the recurring Titanic elements keep building recognition for the brewery.

It also gives the range a bit of collectability. You’ve been to India. You’ve tried Germany. America’s appeared at the bar.

Naturally, you’re going to wonder where the ship is heading next.

That’s a much stronger proposition than simply changing the name and colour on the next pump clip.

Good Design Earns Its Keep

We love projects like this because there’s plenty to play with creatively, but there’s a proper job underneath it all.

Titanic needed individual beers to stand out without losing the parent brand. They needed customers to understand unfamiliar products quickly. They needed an idea that could work across different formats and keep going as more beers were introduced.

So that’s what we designed.

Something distinctive enough to get noticed, clear enough to help people choose and flexible enough to keep travelling.

Because a nice-looking pump clip is lovely.

A nice-looking pump clip that helps sell the beer is considerably better.

Got Something New Brewing?

It doesn’t have to be beer.

If you’re launching a new product, extending an existing range or wondering how to make lots of different things feel like they belong to the same brand, that’s exactly the sort of problem we like getting our teeth into.

Talk to PHd Design about your next packaging or branding project.