Maku Brewing
Simply beerful
Maku – finnish for ‘taste’ – needed to update their brand identity to better match the ambition and future vision of the brewery as well as to support their portfolio of different beers.
Starting point
Maku Brewing is a ten-year-old Finnish microbrewery. Born out of passion, the company was one of the first breweries to produce quality craft beers. During the decade, the entire craft scene has experienced an explosive change where Maku's previous brand no longer served its purpose. The growth of the portfolio and the visual bombardment of the competitors had made Maku look like a wall rose. The whole brand had to be completely reconfigured.
Approach
Where other craft breweries one after the other are flamboyant and experimental in their expression, bringing to the market the most diverse flavor combinations with varying results, Maku focuses on the essential, i.e. high-quality and skillfully made, pure beer styles. The revamped brand and identity were built to reflect this strikingly straightforward and ice-cold self-confidence in attitude, as well as to stand out from the cacophony of the competition.
Impact
Maku's brand and identity were completely transformed together with the restructuring of the product portfolio that went through a severe reduction and clarification into a more intuitive and logical entity. In addition, a new beer style and product innovation –Härkönen Papu Ale – was launched, as the first of its kind in the world.
Awards
Collaborators
Awards
Product portfolio
There are thousands of craft beers on the market, so the product portfolio must be simple and understandable for the consumer. The purpose of Maku is to teach people to drink good beers, although separating Finns from basic lagers will not be an easy task.
The white core-range – Maku's interpretation of the classic beer genres – serves as the portfolio's cornerstone. This foundation is continually being updated with a wide range of new products that offer colour, surprise, and experimentation keeping it all fresh and lively.
Härkönen product launch
As the first application of the new identity, we helped Maku to launch its new beer, Härkönen. What could possibly be described as the biggest upheaval in the 10,000-year tradition of beer-making, Härkönen is one of the first beers ever to use malted faba beans as an ingredient. The malted faba bean developed in cooperation with Viking Malt and VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland) makes an excellent ingredient from an environmental point of view, but it also produces good beer.
