Fermentation science shapes Love + Money’s identity for Omega Yeast — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Omega is a Chicago-based brewing technology company that uses brewing science to get more out of yeast. “There are hundreds of beautiful strains available, and the overwhelming majority (~95%) of the world’s beer is made with a handful of them,” explains Brand & Marketing Lead Bill McFarland. “The catalogue had grown past the point where our identity could carry it. We hit the ceiling and our brand began to get confusing as we rolled out new products. With roughly 100 strains, multiple product tiers and global ambitions spanning liquid and dry yeast, nutrients and lab services, the brand was in need of a scalable, versatile system that could give clear direction.”

Melbourne-based design consultancy Love + Money reorganised that product catalogue and brand architecture, building the new identity around the science of yeast fermentation, so every strain has its own visual expression, determined by its characteristics. Omega also needed it to work across print, digital and packaging, and “to inspire its team.”

“It’s just that they ask the best questions,” McFarland tells us of the choice to partner with Love + Money. “They were just so curious to understand if something was working or not, wanting to understand how the business worked, the context and the history behind every detail. Love + Money’s process was a masterclass of vulnerability and distillation,” he adds. “That maximal curiosity is what led us to unearth a brand strategy that was both locked in with the business side of things but, even more importantly, an identity that is the connective tissue and engine behind Omega.”

Love + Money set the project’s strategic frame with three design principles – Catalytic, Cultured and Calibrated – and the proposition ‘Omega brings the culture forward.’ “The system they created brings clarity to the taxonomy while letting each strain breathe,” McFarland notes. This feeds directly into the illustration system used to distinguish strains. Omega’s yeast strains sit in four categories – Lagers, Bretts, Ales and Bacteria – resulting in an illustration’s shape and base colour for each. Attenuation then distorts the shape, and alcohol tolerance sets the size variation between shapes. Base colours stay within their category, while the wider palette shifts from one strain to the next.

The base of each illustration was created in Cavalry, whose procedural nature let the studio set and change values. “There were so many more values within the different strains, but we needed to find the right levers so that it could work simply while still showing real variation between strains,” explains Love + Money’s Rob Farmer. “The system needed to be rigid enough that it could be applied to a long list of strains but have enough flexibility to show variation.” He adds that “it was quickly evident how crucial labelling would be, and that the illustrations alone couldn’t be the only way we differentiate products.”

The reference for the illustrations came from visual arts, while the system around them was inspired by old modernist pharmaceutical brands. The wordmark sets omega in lowercase with a horizontal line above the letters, and a short version of it, an ‘o’ with a line above it, appears as a secondary mark. The line is used as a recurring graphic element across the identity, dividing, framing and organising content from packaging to print, referencing the visual language of laboratory equipment and scientific tables. The system is set up to give the illustrations their own space. “Without a clean system, the brand risked being too visually overwhelming,” Farmer notes.

The typography pairs Pangram Pangram’s gothic sans serif Mori with the monospaced Fraktion Mono. “They both feel very clean and clinical,” Farmer details. “Like the white panels, they were part of that system that contrasted really well with the loud and colourful illustrations. Given Omega’s scientific and lab-based approach, we wanted the system to have a pharmaceutical or scientific feel.”

Love + Money designed the site around dynamic filtering, so a brewer can narrow the catalogue by a strain’s behaviour instead of its name alone. “We wanted to empower the brewer to be their own guide,” McFarland concludes.