Spread Design and Innovation collaborated with Indian Craft Brewery (ICB) to craft a strategy, brand, positioning and experience that redefines the brewery landscape in India. ICB is more than a brewery; it is a cultural movement that transforms longing into belonging by reconnecting individuals with their roots and offering a sanctuary for meaningful connections.
Spread’s approach involved creating a deeply evocative imagination property that blended Indic heritage with cutting-edge experiential design. From crafting a logo inspired by ancient Indic seals to designing sacred, sensory-rich spaces, every element of ICB resonates with authenticity and cultural pride. The result is a brewery that celebrates India’s ancient brewing traditions while introducing a bold, modern identity. Making ICB a beacon of authenticity, community, and fulfillment in Bengaluru’s thriving brewery scene.
From Longing to Belonging
In a fast-paced urban landscape, where emptiness often lurks beneath a life filled with material abundance, Indian Craft Brewery (ICB) emerges as an institution designed to craft fulfillment. At the heart of ICB lies a deep connection to Indic roots, blending the richness of ancient traditions with innovative experiences. ICB’s mission is to turn ordinary moments into extraordinary ones, transforming longing into belonging.
The Purpose
ICB is more than a brewery; it is a journey of rediscovery. It celebrates the essence of Indic civilization through taste, design, and culture. Rooted in the belief that true fulfillment comes from authenticity and connection, ICB crafts an experience that is personal, sensitive, and luxurious in its primal simplicity. It is a place where tradition meets modernity, offering a sanctuary for individuals seeking deeper connections, meaningful experiences, and a taste of their heritage.
The Challenge
With over 70 breweries in Bengaluru, the beer capital of India, the landscape is saturated with global influences but so far lacks a brewery that truly resonates with Indian roots. The founding team of ICB aimed to disrupt this space by introducing a culturally rich, deeply evocative craft brewery experience. Spread’s role was to conceptualize and create an imagination property that encapsulates this bold ambition. This required not just a rethinking of the brewery’s offering but also a complete reimagining of how culture, design, and gastronomy could coalesce to deliver an unparalleled experience.
VARI
The water carrier, quenching our thirst/s and easing our quests. Our story starts from precious crafted designer seals found in Indic Times. They were markers of wealth. The truest wealth is happiness.
So we took the idea of our physical and spiritual journeys – Transcending boundaries, overcoming everyday challenges to find happiness out there and within.
We are all Journeymen and women. The Vari is thus both the thirsty and the thirst quencher. Both you and your companion. ICB turns the Longing of the spirit into Belonging!
Given the importance of water in our lives, we felt that the symbol should represent our journey and ICB be the people who satisfy our thirst, a soulful thirst for culture, for experiences, for taste, for experience that is heightened and extremely personal and sensitive.
Real luxury is when we find our primal, native, true selves. To revitalise our drinking, eating, gathering, communing, celebrating culture, going back within to a space that is authentic, that knows us and that we know yet is bold and new.
Spread engagement
At Spread, we engage with ideas that challenge the status quo.
We care deeply about culture and have a fierce pride in our civilization and in our roots. We are committed to elevating the human experience. In our geography with our deep stories.
That the founding team of ICB was attempting something audacious at a deep and serious scale told us that we had the opportunity to create what we call an imagination Property.
Madness was the one word the Founders used to describe their ambition, but I don’t think it is madness. It is the right idea at the right time with over 70 breweries in Bangalore, which is the beer capital of the country – it is surprising that in our minds we are so colonised that we don’t yet have a brewery with Indian roots. Actually, we have a culture of craft.
Together we journeyed to the heart of the Indic civilization to find stories we could tell in the space and the experience, through the taste buds, through evocative ideas
So this is our story, our roots, our experience revisited, we say it’s innonative, not just innovative.
Beer has been brewed in India since at least 1500 BC, as attested by Vedic literature. The earliest beers were made from rice or millet.
Beer symbolises friendship, loyalty and community and opens up possibilities.
Beeroglyphs
A series of illustrations with custom typography tell tales of long forgotten stories and shape the brand experience. Be it with beautiful names for spaces within the brewery or beer nomenclature.
Distinctly ICB, the design language marks your entire experience with Beeroglyphs. You must ask for your own beeroglyph digital stickers as they do exist. No other Brewery brand must have so much design thinking or brand thought. That’s a challenge!
A sacred space
Brewing Community,
Fermenting friendship,
Crafting happiness.
Crafted with an elemental palette. Bold custom Indic typography with beer codes. Pops of Indian colour…brand as a system that shows up in everything from the materials and flowers in the space to the food.
For a chiseled and rich crafted and timeless feel, based on the seals, we created a custom font that we call ‘Varg’, Sanskrit for square.
The type in the entire language comes from the Indic seals that were used to keep accounts of wealth.
So the ICB logo is the mark of a clan leader, a new happiness that is a new wealth. It’s a new age
typographic mark.
The typography follows beer codes. But is an original crafted typeface.
Coasting
That stands for culture opinion art sustainability taste
A vast secret space that feels sacred, has arches, halls and corridors that go on into infinity, a place with all natural elements – flowing water, very tall trees, fire in tall square vessels, animal characters and regal ones standing tall, almost 3 times human height.
The spaces are named inspired by the idea of returning to our Indic roots, evoking a sense of longing and belonging.
Custom creatures have descended from your memory of the past into ICB. When you visit ICB, you must realise that it is a vast expanse. For Brewing Community. Fermenting Friendships. Crafting Happiness.
You can COAST here / (Culture, Opinion, Art, Sustainability, Taste), i.e. experience different spaces of the craft brewery at different times of the day, for different occasions/ days of the week.
You will ask, is this a microbrewery, a sacred space or a film production place…it is designed to challenge your intellect all year long and hence the brand launch…to keep you thinking! It’s your soul place!
Spread’s approach involved creating a deeply evocative imagination property. From deep research into the past, going back to 1500 BC, when beer was brewed in ancient India, to positioning ICB strategically to crafting a logo inspired by ancient Indic seals to designing sacred, sensory-rich spaces, every element of ICB resonates with authenticity and cultural pride. The result is a brewery that celebrates India’s ancient brewing traditions while introducing a bold, modern identity. Making ICB a beacon of authenticity, community, and fulfillment in Bengaluru’s thriving brewery scene.
