Hi, there.

Today I want to revisit our thinking on Modular Brand Identity Systems. 

We first wrote about this topic back in 2022 and have continued to flesh this concept out over the last few years. We’ve got a handful of updates, caveats and best practices we’d like to share. 

As a quick refresher… 

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What is a Modular Brand Identity System 

A Modular Brand Identity System — a churched up term we coined more than a decade ago — is a flexible system of identity components that can be used as needed to best suit a particular touch point. This means you’ll have a primary mark and a collection of secondary supporting assets (more on this in a bit) to round your identity system out. 

(Above): Revisit our initial BBT issue on Modular Brand Identity Systems. And here's a podcast if you'd like more context. 

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Why is this approach valuable?

Consistency & flexibility: Building your brand identity system this way helps your brewery’s overarching look and feel stay fresh and lively across different channels and touch points while still being consistent and familiar. This helps your brewery build long-term visual and Brand Equity. 

Distinctive assets: This approach gives you more ownable iconography and assets beyond your main mark (extending to your broader identity and packaging trade dress). On a functional level, this means you have more to trademark and can continue building your overall enterprise value (good for when/if you ever decide to sell your business).  

A turnkey merch program: A well-built Modular Brand Identity System has an added benefit of acting as a baked-in merch program. All of your supporting assets allow you to create a variety of cool merch and spin up an important revenue stream without having to spend another 5–10k on custom merch (after spending many tens of thousands of dollars on your branding in the first place).


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Now that you understand what a Modular Brand Identity System is, let’s run through a handful of other points CODO has been discussing around the shop and with our clients on this topic.

(Above): We built Left Field's Modular Brand Identity System expressly so they could reignite their merch program. 

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Less is more: Good design is good editing

We now view restraint as one of the most important parts of building a Modular Brand Identity System. 

And this is a constant struggle, both for our team, our clients, and for Cody and me looping this all together to work properly. 

Here’s the thing — when you work with talented designers — or are one yourself — you’re really good at making stuff. That’s kind of the point. So if we need a tagline treatment, or another supporting icon, or we want to riff on a particular claim, our team of Sr. Designers can crank out several dozen options over the course of a few days. 

And a lot of this stuff will be cool. 

There’s another element here in wanting to blow our clients away and over deliver. This is something we’ve strived for in every project we’ve fielded since our first day of business. But as we’ve gotten older — and worked with 70, 80 and now 95+ breweries — Cody and I have realized that less really is more here. And giving a client a big pile of logos that ultimately aren’t as cohesive as they should be, actually does them a disservice. 

But at some point in this process — usually as we make our way from the first round of revisions into the second round — we have to shift gears away from raw creative exploration and towards the much less sexy, but important work of winnowing and editing and removing anything that isn’t completely in lockstep with the rest of the identity.

Your identity system is only as strong as your weakest component. This means you’ll have to kill your darlings. 

If you’ve built a strong primary mark around a clear positioning (backed up by Brand Strategy), then you probably don’t need that ninth mark. (Even if it does look cool.)

Good design is good editing.

(Above): We started super broad on Alewerks' initial identity concepts during their brand refresh. But we landed on a tight, well considered system after several rounds of revisions.

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Bring your claims to life

Another great thing that can come from this approach is leading a specific visual treatment to your tagline(s) and various claims.

There’s nothing particularly revelatory here, other than we think this is increasingly important as the beer industry continues to blend with the broader Bev Alc category. There’s a lot of noise out there, and helping your fans, and potential customers, understand what you stand for and why they should spend their hard earned money on your beer is important. And it’s getting more important every day.

(Above): Wachusett's recent rebrand is a great example of bringing various claims to life through an identity system. "Around here since 1994" is one of my favorite lines to come out of a branding process in recent years.  

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Primary vs. Secondary vs. Tertiary vs. Supporting 

This is a semantic process note, but I’m including it to give you a behind the scenes look at how our process and thinking regularly evolves here at CODO. 

We’ve historically broken brand identity systems down into “primary,” “secondary” and “tertiary” marks.

Your primary mark is your main mark, and as such, should be used on all major touch points. 

Your secondary marks include a few key icons that clearly relate to the primary mark. These are set up to accommodate specific use cases you’ll run into out in the wild — horizontal builds, vertical builds, one color applications, comically small logo placements, etc.

And tertiary assets round out the supporting cast that provides extra spice and depth to your entire identity system. This can include things like tagline builds, other non-secondary icons (“bugs”), textures, and alternate logo builds. These are usually used in conjunction with your primary mark to add more detail to something (e.g. the admin panel on a can or the side of a 6-pack box, etc.).


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Here’s our shift: We now break this into “primary” and “supporting” assets. 

We’ve had a handful of clients get confused on the difference between the “secondary” and “tertiary” terminology — Which one should I put on a shirt? Can these both be on our crowler? etc. 

And after digging into this, we’ve found that our framing on this subject itself is what’s causing the confusion. 

So now, we deliver a primary mark (or series of marks) along with a batch of “supporting” iconography that you can use to bring your brand to life. No more worrying about tiers.

Primary marks are anything that can confidently be used to promote your parent brand itself. Supporting assets are nice to haves that bring more character to packaging and merch and your broader identity. 

(Above): Mission's brand identity system is a good example of primary vs supporting assets. The top mark is their main logo, but they can use the next four as needed as well in that role. Everything below that comprise their supporting iconography and regularly shows up in merch, tap handles, signage and POS.

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Where should these files live?

These tools do you no good if you can’t quickly access and share them. So we’ve also started putting more emphasis on how we organize, label and deliver files as well as where these should live. 

This can be as simple as well organized folders in your team’s Dropbox or Drive account. And we’re also seeing more breweries move over to dedicated Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools like BrandFolder. 

Like a few of our other points here today (“tertiary” vs. “supporting,” c’mon!), file organization isn’t particularly sexy. But it will keep your brand identity in better shape long term if you get it squared away out of the gate. 

Wrapping up

A final thought here. 

I think another benefit of building out a Modular Brand Identity System is that it sets you up for a smoother brand evolution over time. 

As an example, you could use your primary mark for a decade, then transition to using more of a secondary icon and on and on until you’re using the most base icon in your system. See the Starbucks example above.

In this way, you’re laying the groundwork for continual brand building. And assuming your positioning and Brand Strategy are still holding up several years from now, any level of brand refresh you undertake won’t be as big a leap for your team, partners and fans.