Aero Crafters Beer Garden & Gastropub

The way I see it, you can either work for a living or you can fly airplanes. Me, I’d rather fly.
— Len Morgan

In Brief

Aero Crafters is Victoria, Texas’ newest craft beer garden & gastropub. The owner, an entrepreneur and aviator, desired to pay homage to his love of flying and create a destination to rival those of nearby Austin. Aero Crafters needed a brand that was sophisticated, but still approachable to patrons who may be new arrivals to the craft beer bar scene.

Scope of work

• Logo and visual identity system
• Web
• Marketing collateral
• Signage

Solution

This was not to be another theme bar. We planned to build a visual identity well away from on-the-nose bars filled with airplane parts.

The owner has been taken with the Vought F4U Corsair since childhood—a distinctive drop wing WWII naval fighter—and wanted to incorporate it as subtly into Aero Crafters’ materials as possible. We used the Corsair’s frequent navy blue and yellow color scheme as the starting point for the visual identity system.

The logo mark’s script was chosen and reworked to bear a resemblance to old breweries and classic golden age aviation marks—such as Curtiss Aeroplane—and set on a circular lockup of an abstracted spinning, gold-tipped propellor.

Supporting marks and typefaces were established, along with several sub icons—a barley sprig, a runway worker carrying barley, and a head-on view of the Corsair—to establish a flexible brand system with the built in element of surprise in its unpredictability.

In addition to menus, glasses, matchbooks, and a mobile responsive website, we designed and managed production of a 14 foot backlit LED channel letter sign of the Aero Crafters logo to the building’s front facade.