Great brands always seem to have a spirit of place about them and Jim Beam is no exception. A bourbon with a story almost as old as Kentucky and one that legend has it, was first bottled and shared on the Beam family porch over two centuries ago. This is a brand that likes to see people come together: a whiskey for people who like people.
Despite being “The world’s number 1 bourbon whiskey” and a familiar sight on shelves around the world, Jim Beam's rich history and inviting personality was muted by generic category tropes. With one hell of a story to tell, we wanted folks to see it’s soul shine through in everything.
To serve all the needs of a modern brand, we set about recrafting and simplifying the brandmark. For the Jim Beam white bottle, everything that made it iconic was already there in two centuries of label design. Using traditional methods, we honored seven generations of distilling, carefully redesigning each element and returning the bottle to its original white color.
Michelle Gannon — Jim Beam, Global Brand Director“Telling the story of the spirit of the porch alongside the unmistakable marks of Jim Beam enhanced all the brand’s familiarity - a generous, inviting soul true of Kentucky, true of the Family and true of the brand.”
The new visual identity brings a familiar warmth to the brand. A rich sun gold applied authentically, with inked woodblock print adds to the colour palette, staging the iconic bottle and assets in a world of layering and informality. An aesthetic that's unpolished and easy-going, like a well-loved, worn-in, pair of jeans, opens up the brand to invite in a new generation of whiskey drinker. Bringing light, warmth and versatility to a traditionally dark, solitary category.
Like our whiskey, our toolkit is made with a select handful of ingredients, those that make Jim Beam like no other. New to the family is ‘Kentucky Straight’, a bespoke font distilling centuries of previous Beam labels and typographic traditions into one brand typeface.
For a brand that invites folks to come on over and stay awhile, distinct typesetting captures the brand’s easy conversational style, in a tone of voice resonating with warm, plain-speaking familiarity.
Woodcut illustration have been on our bottles for as long as we can remember. Our house style sets us apart from the category with simple shapes and solid Sun Gold fills. Making an icon of our iconic bottle allows the brand to show up with authenticity and craft across a range of environments and materials.
