In early 2017 an exciting opportunity arose for us to design a new bespoke bottle. Our Creative Director Mil Stricevic worked closely with a few different bottle manufactures over the course of a year, developing a modern looking 50cl & 33cl bottle that utilised the Pictish slices & word mark used in our branding. In the end this turned out to be a fairly long process, with a good few hurdles, but eventually we settled on working with glass producer O.I. (Owens of Illinois) who also happen to have a factory based here in Alloa, on the very same industrial estate where our brewery is located.
As the bottle development was going on there was also a need for an update of some of our labels; Fraoch, a brand that people often did not associate with Williams Bros due to it’s very distinct identity & also Caesar Augustus (our second biggest seller) that we felt was lacking a strong identity of it’s own.
Upon the redesigns of these two brands & the signed off final design for the bespoke bottle Mil set to work bringing uniformity to “The Big Eight” (which is what we affectionately call our core 50cl products). These brands had not seen a refresh in a long time, in today's market they had a fairly traditional look & begging to feel a little disjointed, lacking uniformity about them as a group.
BEFORE - A standard 50cl bottle with a traditional shaped front & back label (except Fraoch).
NOW - A bespoke Williams Brothers bottle, utilising our Pictish branding slices with a wrap around label.
Beer is an ever evolving sector & over the years we have moved with the times, creating new brands & pushing boundaries as we continued along our path. We are absolutely delighted & very proud of Mil’s hard work & keen eye for detail, managing to bring the brands in line with a strong Williams crest, bold modern font & a repeating W pattern theme, giving a fresh look to our much loved 50cl range.
Most of the refreshed brands have made their way out into the world already, there are just a couple still to transition (Pavlov's Dog & Midnight Sun) which should be making their way out into the world very soon.