Lis Luis

Case study · Brand identity · 0 to 1

Pilot Brewing

How a tiny, woman-founded brewery got noticed in a city full of breweries

RoleCreative director, working directly with the client (via the agency)
ScopeLabels, cans, illustration, social, mural
ClientCraft brewery
Year2022
36 breweriesCompeting for attention in Charlotte. Public count, 2023.
1,900 sq ftA nano-brewery focused on small, experimental batches, so the brand had to do the talking.
Top 5 nationallyPilot placed No. 5 at the U.S. Open Beer Championship, earning national recognition as an award-winning brewery.
A glass of beer held up in front of the Pilot Brewing mural.
A lineup of Pilot Brewing cans on the taproom bar.

The challenge

Charlotte had dozens of breweries. Pilot was a new, woman-founded nano-brewery in a small space, making small batches, up against more established breweries for the same drinkers.

It couldn't win on size, so it had to win on memory. The brand needed to make people notice a can on a crowded shelf, look twice at a building on the street, and come back. It had to work at every size, from a social post to the side of the building, and keep working as the beer list grew.

The strategy

I worked directly with the client to set three goals for the brand:

Generate foot trafficGet people through the taproom door, again and again.
Build a social followingGive people something worth sharing every week.
Win over the beer crowdEarn craft beer enthusiasts and reviewers.

Where Pilot could win

Charlotte's biggest breweries sell a place. Pilot, at 1,900 square feet, couldn't, so it had to sell a personality and a ritual.

Olde Mecklenburg Brewery

Heritage and space

German-style beer brewed under the 1516 purity law, and what's billed as the Southeast's largest beer garden, on 8.5 acres.

Sycamore Brewing

Scale and lifestyle

"Charlotte's largest independent brewery," with a huge South End beer garden, live music and distribution across six states.

Pilot Brewing

Personality and ritual

Curious, nerdy and playful, built around weekly trivia, small experimental batches and a woman-founded story. Small enough to know your name, and impossible to forget.

Competitor profiles from public sources: Axios, Islands, Brewbound.

The idea

I built the brand as a world instead of a logo. Aviators, quirky birds, science nerds, little icons and small nuances gave every surface something to discover, and gave the brewery a cast of characters it could keep using. A big brewery can buy attention. A small one has to be impossible to forget.

The aviation theme came straight from the name. The hard part was the tone. I first explored a quirky, surreal direction inspired by Ralph Steadman, but it didn't match who the brewery really was: a nerdy, trivia-loving, science-minded crowd. Weekly trivia was one of the taproom's biggest draws, so I leaned in, adding the beer nerds and science details that made the brand feel like an inside joke regulars were in on.

The founders' story was part of the positioning too: a woman-founded brewery making its own way in a crowded, traditionally male industry.

MarkPilot Brewing wordmark with aviator sunglasses.
Voice

pretty fly beer

Aviators, quirky birds and science nerds.

Primary palette
Deep Teal#1C859B
Navy#2D4551
Sunburst Yellow#F2C63F
IllustrationRainbow-striped horse illustration from the Equine Therapy label.
PatternStriped tent pattern in teal, navy and yellow from the Pub Ale label.
In the wildA Pilot Brewing glass with the aviator mark, in front of a row of cans.
At scaleThe pretty fly beer mural on the brewery building.

A brand guide in one view: the mark, the voice, the palette, the illustration style, pattern, and the brand at the size of a glass and the size of a building.

What I designed

  • Beer labels and can designs for the core lineup.
  • Custom illustrations for social: the birds, aviators, science nerds and icons.
  • The whole brand system for social, including patterns and templates the team could reuse.
  • The mural on the brewery building.
  • Vector illustrations built to scale across print, merch, digital and the web.

I built it as a design system, not a set of one-offs. Every new beer could plug into the same characters, patterns and templates, so the social media manager and future designers could keep the brand consistent without starting from scratch.

My labels set the direction that later designers followed after I left the agency. The system was built to be extended by other people, and it was.

Pub Ale label with a striped tent and the Pilot Brewing goggles mark.
Equine Therapy double IPA label with a rainbow horse.
An Island Hopper IPA can held up over the water.

Labels and cans from the Pilot brand system. I designed the original labels; later designers built on that direction.

Brand with a conscience

The brewery also partnered on collaborations with charities working on social justice and environmental causes.

Pilot Brewing social media grid on a phone with illustrated posts.
Powerhouse Pomegranate Pale collaboration can label.

The social system, and the Powerhouse Pomegranate Pale collaboration can, which I designed.

What happened

A busier taproomMore people coming through the door.
More events, bigger crowdsMore weekly events, with more people attending.
A strong social followingThe illustrated social system gave people something to follow.

Results as observed working with the client; no public figures.

Why it matters

A small brewery got a brand big enough to compete for attention in a crowded beer city. And it's creative direction that outlasted my time on it: a world clear enough that other designers could pick it up and keep going.