This content was originally published by The Hop Review, a digital magazine that joined the Hop Culture family in March 2020.
This piece was written by Jack Muldowney.
PITTSBURGH, PA
Back when we were spending our days in Pittsburgh, we called an old Victorian atop Penn Ave. home. Down the block from there, in the Lawrenceville neighborhood was the old Pittsburgh Brewing Co. complex, makers of the iconic
Iron City Beer for over 150 years. Half boarded up and forgotten since leaving the city in 2009, the building resembled a brewery and brand of yesteryear.Fast forward to 2018, and the brewery has been gifted a breath of fresh air thanks to new ownership–and as of 2019, the Iron City Beer brand has been given a facelift thanks to Pittsburgh-based design studio, Top Hat.
And as the design studio has put it, their goal was to “respect the heritage, while moving forward.” And as with any heritage brand, keeping that personality and brand equity, while pushing it into a modern age is much easier said than done; especially when the packaging has more or less consisted of the same logo for nearly a century and a half. How do you execute visual updates without sacrificing the brand’s tenets? Well, somehow Top Hat did just that, by modernizing that iconic Iron City Beer seal logo, and tactfully applying it across new packaging, wearables, and ad campaigns.
Hats off, Top Hat.
“The “red eye [seal]” of Iron City is about the only thing that’s stayed (relatively) constant since 1861. The mind-boggling number of can iterations has built character but hurt brand recognition. We looked to the past to treat the new seal with the care necessary to deserve a place on Pittsburgh’s beer for the next 150 years.”
“Iron City is a brand steeped in local history and more can iterations than we can even begin to unravel. The key to building towards something new was simple, iconic shots of Iron memories to remind Pittsburgh why they love it, and to clue them in to the buildup towards something new.”
–––
Images from Top Hat and builtbytophat.com