We partnered with the Michelob Ultra team at AB InBev to update their brand and packaging line. As a brand with rich history, and great success in recent years, it was important to pay homage, while leaning into what was working. Kudos to that team for recognizing the need for a rebrand at a point when others might have thought that with such success it wasn’t needed.

The partnership was unique in how deeply we worked together, forming multi-day camps in Colorado to understand their active target, and working with professional athletes, influencers, marketers, packaging engineers, and master brewers to inspire the work. We concepted the brand together, dreamed up form factors of new bottle shapes, worked with brand partners on special edition collaborations, tasted experiments from the master brewer, and found unexpected flavors for new product lines. It was a project unlike any other, and as the number three light beer in the world, it’s my largest scale rebrand and packaging to date.

We elongated the ribbon, to find a more iconic shape. We revised and modernized the Michelob script. We introduced an all new typeface for ULTRA, and many of the supporting text. We leaned into white, where the brand was caught between colors. And we fully embraced the target audience within an active lifestyle through every decision made. Side-by-side, the new design is quite different. But what I might be most proud of on this project is the fact that nobody noticed. To me, that says we were authentic to them and wise to carry working elements forward.

We then tured to creating a home for the brand. Michelob Ultra is a brand that understands its target audeince very well, but didn’t have a sense of place. When you think of other light beers, they have a place. So, we set out to build a home for the brand based on the target audience, which live in Colorado, and live an active lifestyle. The brand would take over a large part of the second floor office space at the Budweiser brewery in Fort Collins, CO.This brand hub would serve as a place to hold muilti-day camps that bring together a collective of individuals and dream up what’s next for the brand. We defined an aesthetic that was uniquely contemporary and tech forward, while feeling one with the outdoors and embracing what makes Colorado a special place. There’s influence of round meeting spaces that center around a neon campfire, cabin huts as meeting rooms, lighting suspended from climbing gear, terracotta brick walls to feel like the iconic Red Rocks, and communal tables that resemble mountain chair lifts. The space has a yoga studio, and a locker room to further the athletic ties of the brand. Perhaps my favorite thing about it, is a special moment to their organic product extension, Michelob Ultra Pure Gold, as the space can produce a “Golden Hour” by dropping beer colored gel filters over the windows, filling the space with a warm glow.This is the furthest I’ve been able to dive into architecting and designing branded spaces, and one of the most fun times throughout my career.

The partnership was unique in how deeply we worked together, forming multi-day camps in Colorado to understand their active target, and working with professional athletes, influencers, marketers, packaging engineers, and master brewers to inspire the work. We concepted the brand together, dreamed up form factors of new bottle shapes, worked with brand partners on special edition collaborations, tasted experiments from the master brewer, and found unexpected flavors for new product lines. It was a project unlike any other, and as the number three light beer in the world, it’s my largest scale rebrand and packaging to date.

We elongated the ribbon, to find a more iconic shape. We revised and modernized the Michelob script. We introduced an all new typeface for ULTRA, and many of the supporting text. We leaned into white, where the brand was caught between colors. And we fully embraced the target audience within an active lifestyle through every decision made. Side-by-side, the new design is quite different. But what I might be most proud of on this project is the fact that nobody noticed. To me, that says we were authentic to them and wise to carry working elements forward.