After doing a deep dive with Scorched Earth to gain a feel for their desired brand, we learned it should give a vibe that’s casual, artisinal, handcrafted and comfortable. We chose to use industrial materials like chipboard, kraft paper and rubber stamps combined with classic, utilitarian fonts to give an authentic, raw look. Combining those elements with letterpress printing gives the relaxed, yet high quality feel we were going for. The brick red color for Scorched Earth was inspired by fire and the desaturated palette was inspired by earth tones. Illustrations were drawn by hand to give an imperfect look that feels human and a distressed texture was used to give things a worn, rugged quality.

The name ‘Scorched Earth’ was inspired by prairie fires—a method used to shape and maintain prairie ecosystems—and how the fire brings rebirth and new beginnings to the ecosystems. While some prairie fires are planned and controlled, most of what’s alive today was caused by lightning fires. This idea was the inspiration behind the logo. The sun and earth are depicted in a basic form while lightning breaks the horizon and strikes the ground. We designed the logo to be circular so that it easily fits on things like bottlecaps, coasters, stamps and patches.

Being a newbie to the saturated craft beer scene, we wanted Scorched Earth to enter the market with the best face possible—typeface, that is. Going with the utilitarian look, we designed this simple, working font that looks timeless with no frills. Available only in all caps with consideration for punctuation, this typeface was designed as a display font for their logo, headlines, titles, subtitles and taglines.