A strong brand identity is more crucial than ever when it comes to gaining attention on the shelf or even online. But when a brewery with a recognizable look faces aging assets and a shifting landscape, how do you decide whether to refresh or completely redesign your brand?
For Rhinegeist Brewery, the answer wasn’t a revolution — it was a thoughtful evolution rooted in their original story and a discovery hidden in plain sight.
Creative Director Mike Gertz described the process as a brand refresh, not a redesign.
“A refresh is like a fresh coat of paint — some new furniture, some redecorating,” Gertz said during the 2025 Ohio Craft Brewers Conference. “But a redesign is knocking down walls, completely rethinking some things. And we weren’t there.
“We didn’t need to reinvent ourselves. We just needed to clarify and reconnect the pieces.”
That connection started with taking a long, hard look at what Rhinegeist had been putting into the world over the past decade. Gertz and his creative team physically laid out years of materials — tap handles, posters, packaging — on the taproom floor and stepped back to evaluate it all with fresh eyes.
“We started with a silly exercise,” he said. “We printed out every design asset we could find and spread them all out in our taproom one morning. Then we starred the ones that still worked, and we pulled the ones that felt dated or inconsistent.”
The process uncovered something that had been with them since the beginning but had never been fully explored: stripes.
“Our founder just liked stripes,” Gertz said. “There was a clothing line he liked at the time, and stripes ended up on our packaging. They became our system without much story behind them. But we realized — they’ve been with us from the beginning. They’re iconic. They just didn’t mean anything yet.”
Rather than discard the stripes, the team searched for a way to anchor them in Rhinegeist’s identity. That breakthrough came with a single word embedded in the brand’s name: Geist, meaning spirit.
“That’s when it clicked,” Gertz said. “Geist means spirit. Everything we do is about spirit. The spirit of the Rhine, the spirit of community, the spirit of revival in this old building we’re in. That’s what the stripes became. They represent that spirit.”
This insight gave the design team a new North Star.
“The best brand ideas are often already there, right under your nose,” Gertz said. “You don’t have to look far. You just have to look differently.”
From there, the team created a more unified and modernized visual identity. The name and logo remained the same — Rhinegeist and its skull-and-dropmark symbol still carried weight — but the new system added clarity and emotion.
“We had a great name. A great logo. We didn’t want to touch those,” Gertz said. “But we were lacking a story that brought all of it together visually and emotionally.”
That story became central to the refreshed brand. The new identity, he said, celebrates the revival of the brewery’s historic home in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and centers on the human energy behind every beer.
“We’re do-it-yourselfers,” said Gertz. “We call it Geisten. It’s that entrepreneurial, scrappy spirit that’s always been part of this place. We wanted our brand to reflect that — not just in what it looks like, but in what it feels like.”
As the brewery team moved through the process, Gertz remained focused on the fundamentals of great branding.
“A good brand identity starts with a strong story,” he said. “If you get the story right, everything else becomes easier — your design, your packaging, your messaging.
“It all clicks.”
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He emphasized the importance of distinct, recognizable assets, applied consistently but not rigidly.
“The best brands find a dance between consistency and flexibility,” Gertz said. “It’s like a great meal. There’s a base you recognize, but there’s always something new to taste.”
For anyone considering a brand update, Gertz recommends starting with an honest internal evaluation and consumer conversations.
“Ask yourself: does this still work? Talk to your fans. At Rhinegeist, we hold scrappy focus groups in the taproom. People love to share their thoughts—especially over a beer,” he said.
While the world around craft beer continues to shift, Rhinegeist’s refresh shows that evolution doesn’t always mean starting over. Sometimes, it means rediscovering what was meaningful all along and giving it the clarity to shine.
“We weren’t interested in chasing trends,” Gertz said. “We just wanted to be more of who we already were.”
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