The logo I will be analyzing is from Prost Brewing Companies redesign from 2019. Some necessary information about Prost is that they are a German style brewing company. That is to say, they brew only German style beers such as: altbier, weissbier, pilsner, marzen and so many more. These are all fundamental beer styles throughout Germany’s history, given they are all very hop heavy brews, and Germany is within the hop growing belt of the world. Considering “prost” means “cheers” in German, the connection between the company name and what they produce is a given. But the redesign gives this connection much more meaning than Prost’s prior logo.
Prost’s former logo could be loosely described as an early 1940’s art deco style design. With an arbitrary typeface and inexplicable vector lines. Their logo had no connection to the history they are obviously trying to emulate with their choice of brews. They relied heavily on their former typeface, which lacked depth and visual cohesiveness with the overall designs of the bottles and packaging. Now onto the beauty that is Prost’s current logo.
I am obsessed. The research and skill behind Prost’s current logo is unprecedented. Let me explain. The typeface behind their logo could be considered a blackletter style, but custom for their company. With this in mind, think Johannes Gutenberg; both in German roots and history. The new logo ties in the German heritage of the brews that Prost creates, as well as their name and the history of Germany. As Johannes Gutenberg is German, and was the creator of the printing press, you’d hope that a predominantly German company would have a strong typeface to present on the front of their labels. Prost also utilizes the traditional law of the Reinheitsgebot (meaning they only use hops, yeast, water, and malted barley within their beer), and imports only German grains and hops. That all said, the goal of the logo was to reach towards something that stands out to be truly German. Clean crisp lines that could only be described as sexy, with high contrast to the remaining negative space. The previous embellishments were unnecessary as the custom type of their wordmark was powerful enough to captivate attention. The gaudy “traditional” German designs previously used would not stand up to the craft beer market we see today. Therefore Prost needed to modernize their design and lean against what they have going for them; which is the hundreds of years of damn good beer and culture that their name emits.
Looking closer, the redesign of Prost’s logo shows detail oriented work and acknowledgement to the potential application of the asset (see image below). The alignment of negative space between the top curve of the “s” and the left branch of the “t” is ridiculously satisfying. Heightened by the consistent angles and weight throughout the custom type. In the new logo, the “p” and “t” break the baseline and act as descenders for the “brewing co.” to comfortably nestle within the space provided. This draws the eyes into the wordmark through the reflected angles of the descenders. With such clean and consistent lines, no distracting embellishments are needed to leave a lasting impression of fine craftsmanship. Hopefully the same could be said for the beer within, as I’m going to attempt to order some of their brews after seeing this logo. It just goes to show how significant a well designed logo is for displaying a beer in such a competitive market of craft beer and flashy or overwhelming design. Simple is sexy.
