September 16, 2024KBC2.0
The New Look KBC
The New Look KBC
We’ve been talking a number of times about the next steps and evolution of Kyoto Brewing, following the incoming of our new head brewer, James Fox. It is, of course, a huge step for us as a company.
We have changed, and we are changingAnd as we shared before, we are moving forward and taking the company in a new direction. This is no small undertaking, and isn’t just a matter of penning a few new recipes. It’s a fundamental shift that happens through all facets of our company. We’d like to talk a little bit about why we are going through a major shift. At the end of the day, change is hard. It takes more time, and with it comes a degree of chaos.
Change is necessary as well. While we could in theory tell our new head brewer to keep doing what we have been doing up to now, why would we? Companies do their best work when they are challenging themselves, which you can’t do when you just try to keep doing the same thing.
We really believe that change is an opportunity. We decided even before our previous head brewer, Chris, left (see blog post) that we would embrace the opportunity to enable the great members of the brew team we have, but also that we would look to make the best of the new person joining as head brewer. If we can keep the best parts of what has made our identity up until now, and bring in new knowledge and ideas, how far can we go?
Change is all encompassing. While people might be focused on the beer - and we are a brewery, so why wouldn’t they? - the truth is that everyone in the company is feeling the change. The company’s philosophy is evolving as well, and our new dynamic is made up of who is in our company now, not just who was here before.
Kyoto Brewing’s look will change, too
Funnily enough, one of the scariest realisations we have had to make is the need to make changes to our brand as well. It might sound a bit obvious when you take a step back, but if our company’s beer program, and its fundamental culture, is changing, then why wouldn’t its visual change to reflect this?
Many people will no doubt have noticed that the visual style of our recent “KBC 2.0” dubbed more modern, and higher impact limited releases is different from our visuals up to now.
Up until earlier this year, all of our design, with the exception of the illustrations for our Mari Family series, has been done by one talented designer living in Kyoto. While we love what our visual brand has become since we started, we also felt now was the right time to review our company’s identity, and go through an update based upon where we are, and where we are going.
Cue Stout Collective, an American-based design agency of beer lovers who focus on design for craft beer breweries such as Other Half, and upcoming work with Allagash, along with many others.
While we are based in Japan, we are at the end of the day part of the global craft beer scene, and the chance to work with a company that essentially lives and breathes our industry felt like an opportunity that not many breweries in Japan have. And as a bona fide design outfit, they are of course equipped to view and work through the brand holistically, based upon what KBC’s DNA is.While we have immediately been asking them to create some new one-off beers, from Aratamemashite and Donburako to our more recent Irotoridori series, this can perhaps be seen a little bit as a preview. In order to really review our brand, we needed to go deeper than simply slapping some new illustrations and colours on our products, and so Stout have been taking us through an exercise, taking a step back, and defining what Kyoto Brewing is in 2024, what it will be going forward, and therefore how that should be represented visually.
This is quite an intense exercise, and the last time we did anything similar was when we were a brewery in planning 10 years ago. Unsurprisingly, we are finding quite a few differences.
We won’t go into the details of these differences now, but we will share that the KBC 2.0 beers have been intentionally playing around with new design ideas on an ad-hoc basis, while we take the chance to experiment with different beers to those we were perhaps known for. This has been liberating, and the “KBC 2.0” beers can be perhaps considered a bit of a sandpit, but we haven’t yet completely escaped our own brand’s shadow yet, and so have retained design elements such as fonts, and certain template elements.
Our Broader Update is Coming
So we have made some changes, but the bigger ones are yet to come. We can no doubt say this about our brew program, in that we are still getting used to our breweries’ shiny new toys, James is still fine-tuning our equipment, and we are still in a definition phase.
Changes won’t be limited to just adding a few “2.0” beers to our existing selection. We believe it must go deeper than that. As a result, we are reviewing our existing series. We are looking at what to keep, and what we need to move on from. For those we are keeping, we are looking at them and asking ourselves the question, “are these the beers that we would make were were to start all over again, or do we need to update them?” And the same question is happening for the visual element of the company.
This doesn’t mean we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We know what elements of our beers we love, and we don’t want to throw that away. We love Belgian beers and our house yeast. We aren’t throwing that away either. And this also means that, while we update our visuals, a part of our DNA will naturally remain.
But we will be clear, we will be making sure that our lineup, and our products across the board, represent KBC in 2025, and not KBC in 2015, and this includes our year-round beers, and the series we have been working with from the early days.
We will need to make some sacrifices. We feel a little bit sad about letting go of some of the things we really like ourselves - Kuroshio no Gotoku being a recent example. But it’s a little like cleaning up your house. Part of it is simply a matter of cleaning up and prioritising, and sometimes you feel a little bit of pain when you need to part with something that brings back fond memories. But staying too attached to your past and keeping everything stops you from bringing in new things, looking forward, and throwing your whole self into who you are now. Not brewing Kuroshio gives us the chance to brew some other, more experimental, dark beers, and many other types of beers as well.
Change is inevitable. Change is scary.
Change is exciting. Change is moving forward.
So what can we look forward to? We will before too long release updates to our series for next year, including what will replace this year’s fruit IPA series. With our brand review in its final stages now, we are close to having our new visual identity completed, which we will be excited to share in due course. This new identity won’t be limited to one section of our beers, but will include updates to font and our logo. From there, the really exciting work will get going with planned updates from January to our year-round beer labels, as well as the labels for our Kimagure, all of our other existing limited release series, as well of course as the continuation of our experimentations with hops, styles, and other fun beer concepts.
With a touch of apprehension and a little sense of nostalgia, we are excited to bring to you the next steps in Kyoto Brewing. Keep an eye out on our SNS and blog for a taste of what is to come, and the reveals when they happen!
We’ve been talking a number of times about the next steps and evolution of Kyoto Brewing, following the incoming of our new head brewer, James Fox. It is, of course, a huge step for us as a company.
We have changed, and we are changingAnd as we shared before, we are moving forward and taking the company in a new direction. This is no small undertaking, and isn’t just a matter of penning a few new recipes. It’s a fundamental shift that happens through all facets of our company. We’d like to talk a little bit about why we are going through a major shift. At the end of the day, change is hard. It takes more time, and with it comes a degree of chaos.
Change is necessary as well. While we could in theory tell our new head brewer to keep doing what we have been doing up to now, why would we? Companies do their best work when they are challenging themselves, which you can’t do when you just try to keep doing the same thing.
We really believe that change is an opportunity. We decided even before our previous head brewer, Chris, left (see blog post) that we would embrace the opportunity to enable the great members of the brew team we have, but also that we would look to make the best of the new person joining as head brewer. If we can keep the best parts of what has made our identity up until now, and bring in new knowledge and ideas, how far can we go?
Change is all encompassing. While people might be focused on the beer - and we are a brewery, so why wouldn’t they? - the truth is that everyone in the company is feeling the change. The company’s philosophy is evolving as well, and our new dynamic is made up of who is in our company now, not just who was here before.
Kyoto Brewing’s look will change, too
Funnily enough, one of the scariest realisations we have had to make is the need to make changes to our brand as well. It might sound a bit obvious when you take a step back, but if our company’s beer program, and its fundamental culture, is changing, then why wouldn’t its visual change to reflect this?
Many people will no doubt have noticed that the visual style of our recent “KBC 2.0” dubbed more modern, and higher impact limited releases is different from our visuals up to now.
Up until earlier this year, all of our design, with the exception of the illustrations for our Mari Family series, has been done by one talented designer living in Kyoto. While we love what our visual brand has become since we started, we also felt now was the right time to review our company’s identity, and go through an update based upon where we are, and where we are going.
Cue Stout Collective, an American-based design agency of beer lovers who focus on design for craft beer breweries such as Other Half, and upcoming work with Allagash, along with many others.
While we are based in Japan, we are at the end of the day part of the global craft beer scene, and the chance to work with a company that essentially lives and breathes our industry felt like an opportunity that not many breweries in Japan have. And as a bona fide design outfit, they are of course equipped to view and work through the brand holistically, based upon what KBC’s DNA is.While we have immediately been asking them to create some new one-off beers, from Aratamemashite and Donburako to our more recent Irotoridori series, this can perhaps be seen a little bit as a preview. In order to really review our brand, we needed to go deeper than simply slapping some new illustrations and colours on our products, and so Stout have been taking us through an exercise, taking a step back, and defining what Kyoto Brewing is in 2024, what it will be going forward, and therefore how that should be represented visually.
This is quite an intense exercise, and the last time we did anything similar was when we were a brewery in planning 10 years ago. Unsurprisingly, we are finding quite a few differences.
We won’t go into the details of these differences now, but we will share that the KBC 2.0 beers have been intentionally playing around with new design ideas on an ad-hoc basis, while we take the chance to experiment with different beers to those we were perhaps known for. This has been liberating, and the “KBC 2.0” beers can be perhaps considered a bit of a sandpit, but we haven’t yet completely escaped our own brand’s shadow yet, and so have retained design elements such as fonts, and certain template elements.
Our Broader Update is Coming
So we have made some changes, but the bigger ones are yet to come. We can no doubt say this about our brew program, in that we are still getting used to our breweries’ shiny new toys, James is still fine-tuning our equipment, and we are still in a definition phase.
Changes won’t be limited to just adding a few “2.0” beers to our existing selection. We believe it must go deeper than that. As a result, we are reviewing our existing series. We are looking at what to keep, and what we need to move on from. For those we are keeping, we are looking at them and asking ourselves the question, “are these the beers that we would make were were to start all over again, or do we need to update them?” And the same question is happening for the visual element of the company.
This doesn’t mean we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We know what elements of our beers we love, and we don’t want to throw that away. We love Belgian beers and our house yeast. We aren’t throwing that away either. And this also means that, while we update our visuals, a part of our DNA will naturally remain.
But we will be clear, we will be making sure that our lineup, and our products across the board, represent KBC in 2025, and not KBC in 2015, and this includes our year-round beers, and the series we have been working with from the early days.
We will need to make some sacrifices. We feel a little bit sad about letting go of some of the things we really like ourselves - Kuroshio no Gotoku being a recent example. But it’s a little like cleaning up your house. Part of it is simply a matter of cleaning up and prioritising, and sometimes you feel a little bit of pain when you need to part with something that brings back fond memories. But staying too attached to your past and keeping everything stops you from bringing in new things, looking forward, and throwing your whole self into who you are now. Not brewing Kuroshio gives us the chance to brew some other, more experimental, dark beers, and many other types of beers as well.
Change is inevitable. Change is scary.
Change is exciting. Change is moving forward.
So what can we look forward to? We will before too long release updates to our series for next year, including what will replace this year’s fruit IPA series. With our brand review in its final stages now, we are close to having our new visual identity completed, which we will be excited to share in due course. This new identity won’t be limited to one section of our beers, but will include updates to font and our logo. From there, the really exciting work will get going with planned updates from January to our year-round beer labels, as well as the labels for our Kimagure, all of our other existing limited release series, as well of course as the continuation of our experimentations with hops, styles, and other fun beer concepts.
With a touch of apprehension and a little sense of nostalgia, we are excited to bring to you the next steps in Kyoto Brewing. Keep an eye out on our SNS and blog for a taste of what is to come, and the reveals when they happen!