Package Design - April 2014 - 32

The
Brew
Crew
Ponysaurus Brewing Co.
wraps heritage-and-quality
cues in a package that
commands attention.
By Keith Loria

T

o stand out from the thousands of craft beers on the
market, Ponysaurus Brewing
Co., looked to create a package design that would pay homage to
higher-gravity French farmhouse ales
that the brand emulated.
"As the brewer, I thought it was
important that our design follow our
overall goal of presenting a brewery that
takes the beer very seriously, but not
everything else," says Keil Jansen, the
owner of the Durham, N.C. company.
"There's a sense of continuity of flavor
and approach across all our styles that
we wanted to include in the design, and
making the bottles similar was a big part
of that."
Jansen turned to the design agency
Baldwin& for his needs, which consisted of three design goals: standing out
32

APRIL 2014

in a crowded market, creating a mark
that could be completely unique to
Ponysaurus and creating an identity that
stayed true to the traditional brewing
style while living up to the eccentricity
of the name.
"It was important to Keil not to go
the popular flavored beer route that you
might see from other nanobreweries,"
says Kellyn McGarity, Baldwin&'s art
director. "He set out to make the besttasting beer that still used traditional
flavors and recipes. Aesthetically, the
package design needed to reflect that
thought process as well. I was immediately drawn to a traditional engraving
style. I wanted the logo to embody the
look and feel of an old pub sign you
might find down an intriguing European
alley. The kind of logo that might make
you do a double take; the name has a

similar effect on people."
As far as the Ponysaurus icon was
concerned, a light bulb went off the
moment McGarity heard the name, and
she knew she had to create the fictional
creature that occurred to her at its first
mention. The result was a hybrid of a
horse and dinosaur that's featured on all
of the bottles.
"Each element of the mark was carefully considered," McGarity says. "The
forelimbs are shortened, similar to a T.
Rex. They make people slightly uncomfortable, almost like he could flip forward at any moment-I love that bit of
awkwardness. He still has a horse face
but then there are aggressive spines
shooting out where a mane would normally be. Lastly, he has a combination
of scales and hair down through his
hindquarters. We used an engraving
Package Design - April 2014

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