JC Dark Lager is an alcoholic, you guessed it… dark lager with a new logo and brand set by Russian design agency Tomatdesign. This is from 2011, but it’s fresh to me and the second I saw it, I knew it deserved attention.

The JC doesn’t stand for ‘Jesus Christ’, but ‘Jean Claude’, a famous wine maker, lover of boats and seemingly a fan of good beers. His passion for yachts and boating formed the centrepiece of the branding, with the rope acting as a symbol of a naturally strong material, wound together to form the name.

The above imagery is nice, kind of like a behind the scenes in a film set, showing how the logo has been created from a tangible object, shaped and formed to the lettering. It goes agains one of the ‘rules’ of logo design, in that you shouldn’t use a photograph in a logo, but this proces the rules are meant to be broken by those who understand them.

Looking to the images below of the packaging, the logomark is shown off strongly on the dark bottles. It’s bold, iconic and very, very, classy.

The packaging itself is what wins it for me, the logo is given substance by the branding it’s been formed into – the bottles themselves offer such a talking point that they could hold the entire conversation for the duration of the bottle, and the next one!

The elegance of and consistence of the rope on the packaging is complemented by the use of black throughout. The bottle top [above] shows how confident branding can work well – many (if not most) would include a logo or wordmark on the top, JC Dark Lager doesn’t need it. The black bottle top is almost iconic in it’s own right, free from distractions it symbolises everything it should.

I love this. I want to try it. I want to hold the bottles. I want to keep the bottles!

Hopefully JC Dark Lager will see this post and send me some ;)

branding, logo, logo of the month