Branding
Digital experience design
Graphic design
ICB
Public Infra
India by design
In a city teeming with breweries that look to the West, Spread Design and Innovation decided to look back – way back.
Spread was awarded with the distinction ‘Red Dot’ in the Red Dot Design Award : Brands & Communication Design in 2025. For our work on ICB (Indian Craft Brewery). Proving that authentic Indian heritage can be a global heavyweight.
Spread’s award-winning design for ICB sidesteps imitation by diving deep into India’s own brewing history, which dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization. The entire brand identity is a nod to these roots, featuring a custom typeface derived from ancient Indic seals and unique Beeroglyphs that narrate ancient tales without a single word.
The result is a brand that is both primal and futuristic, transforming the brewery into a sanctuary of positive hedonism. This philosophy extends to its operations, where sustainability is key, and brewing byproducts are repurposed.
Having already welcomed over 500,000 guests within nine months of its launch, ICB has successfully brought a taste of ancient India to the modern craft beer scene, demonstrating that the most refreshing ideas can be steeped in Indian history.
“Indian culture is the richest open source for native ideas to feed the new and innovative. Globally! Contemporary Indian design and business should work towards being a reference point for original / local ideas with global quality.
The Global South has the opportunity to revisit roots, renew culture and celebrate the richness of craft cultures and make craft the new luxury.
We have looked outwards for too long while the world has leaned into our open source design culture. It’s time to use our imagination to create fresh and unimaginable success stories. And business models that deserve to be scaled as they connect at an emotional, sensitive and visceral level.
Thereby position Indian design globally as having semiotic richness and spiritual depth.
Even a brewery can be a sacred space to discover your true self, find your tribe. ICB brews community, ferments friendships, crafts happiness.”
Sonia Manchanda
Founding Partner, Spread Design and Innovation
Board Member, World Design Organisation
Global win for Indian Design
Spread gets a Red Dot! 🔴 Just announced, a Red Dot Design Award 2025 win in the Brands & Communication category. For Spread’s work on ICB | Indian Craft Brewery.
Rediscovering Indic Roots
In our fast paced city life, we long for a moment of rest, real feelings, genuine laughter, true understanding. For a warm embrace…we have everything and yet there is an emptiness.
Spread went on a quest. Boldly revisiting our Indic roots. Going as far back as possible. Revisiting our culture. To find our Primal, Native, True selves. To revitalize our (drinking) (eating) (gathering) (communing) (celebrating) culture.
Going back within. To a space that is authentic. That knows us and that we know. Yet it is bold and new.
To create a new paradigm, where we celebrate our own culture. With ICB Indian Craft Brewery the difference is Indic.
This project is a break away from the usual patterns of thinking about a brewery, to create a new way of thinking, new heights of experience, rediscovering new ideas from our ancient culture. To turn ordinary everyday experience into extraordinary.
Spread Design and Innovation worked closely with the Founders of the Indian Craft Brewery to develop an original Indian brewery concept by going deep into our Indic roots.
Craft is the new luxury
The Indian Craft Brewery project is the crafting of a new story, a new drinking culture – crafting every design detail of food, drink and place to allow patrons to immerse in a whole new experience. True to us as – craft is the new luxury.
This meant, exploring the trading seals of the Indus Valley Civilization, studying the scripts, taking inspiration from the richness and elemental qualities of the seals. In this rich civilisation, there are traces of beer brewing equipment. Every part of our great country has indigenous spirits – entirely original, native and innovative, a great source of rich inspiration. Familiar, yet surprising!
Besides discovering unbroken traditions in our culture. Research into the Indus Valley’s brewing and trading traditions led to the discovery that beer was brewed in the Indus Valley in 1300 BC and we discovered Vari – a symbol from Indic seals representing an unbroken pilgrimage tradition where young men carry water for miles. The tradition and the water carrier is unbroken – to this day.
Thus we developed the idea of the Vari, the water carrier representing one who quenches our thirst for adventure, also each one of us and ICB patrons.
Crafting the very ‘idea of ICB’ as a sacred space that will ease your pressures.
Brewing community. Fermenting friendship. Crafting happiness.
Red Dot Design Award
Founded in 1955, the Red Dot Design Award is one of the largest and most esteemed design competitions worldwide, often referred to as the “Oscars of Design.”
The award honors excellence in communication design and serves as an internationally recognized mark of quality, reserved exclusively for outstanding winners.
Indian Design with its rich roots, can be a great reference for global quality in thought and execution. Spread’s Red Dot win marks the beginning of an era where Indian design is not just participating in the global conversation, but leading it with imagination, scale, and purpose.
Founded in 2015 in Bengaluru, India, Spread Design and Innovation is a creative engine for radical reimagination.
A proud member of the World Design Organisation (WDO), Spread translates intent into impact, brands and experiences. Integrating strategy and craft, the physical and digital to explode possibilities.
Spread’s Red Dot win marks a rediscovery of Indic roots for the nation and the world. Through the design of the system, brand and cohesive experience of ICB Indian Craft Brewery.
Bring back our Beer
Bengaluru is a young city, with the highest share of citizens in the age brackets of 19 years to 40 years. And with 71 microbreweries, Bengaluru wears the crown as India’s microbrewery capital.
But so far, these microbreweries have celebrated beer culture from various parts of the world – Germany, Greece, Norway, Rome, Bali. It is surprising that in our minds we are so colonised that we don’t yet have a brewery with Indian roots.
It’s time to come back home. Where actually, we have a culture of craft.
Spread Design and Innovation, along with the founders of Indian Craft Brewery took the audacious challenge to create Bengaluru’s 72nd microbrewery. Thus ICB was born as the largest Craft Brewery Brand in India with proud Indic roots.
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.
Beer has been brewed in India since at least 1500 BC. The oldest Vedic texts talk of a beverage, named ‘Sura’, beer of the ancient settlements of the Indus, the fermented beverage of the grain farmers, villagers who have long settled in the great Indus basin and its tributaries. The earliest beers were made from rice or millet. Symbolic of friendship, loyalty and community and opening up possibilities.
This Red Dot Award is a celebration of our story, our roots, our culture. Our experience revisited. Reclaiming our legacy. Beer in Indus Valley. We say it’s inno-native, not just innovative.
Tapping into India’s Living Traditions
Spread’s research revealed how every region of India carries its own indigenous thirst quenchers.
In the North East, rice beers like Apong and Zutho are central to community life. Rajasthan has long relied on grain-based brews crafted to survive its desert climate. Southern India celebrates toddy, palm nectar, and millet-based ferments that have refreshed generations.
These are not just drinks, but living traditions — carriers of stories, rituals, and local genius.
Brewing community. Fermenting friendship. Crafting happiness.
We are seekers. On a perpetual quest, for pleasure. Possibilities. Authentic yet innovative. Adventures. Unexpected yet real.
Pleasure leads to happiness. That we can feel and share. Without being judged. Be it through food or drinks. Craft and culture. Destinations and experiences.
Spread designed the ICB experience as a sanctuary. A sacred space where everything has meaning and tells stories. With the luxury of time, material, space and scale.
Where every server is a Vari. Serving you good food, good beer and good vibes. To ease your troubles. Giving you a nice, pleasant, crafted and happy high. Naturally
The experience is larger than life. Designed for COASTing.
That stands for Culture Opinion Art Sustainability Taste.
ICB is 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, with mythical beasts and regal ones standing tall, almost 3 times human height.
The zones
Nir / Garden of happiness
Taal / Cosmic vibrations
Som / Soul spirit space
Ira / Earth spirit
Puru / Blissed by nature
Arka / Star trails
Moh / Sweet memories
From hosting Indus nights to folk performances, craft workshops to special events for senagers, each zone becomes a sanctuary of positive hedonism,with a distinct experience and many reasons to come visit.
With over 500000 footfalls within 9 months of launch, ambitions are to take ICB to different geographies outside India. The innovations and beer flavours are already popular enough to get bottled.
ICB has truly arrived.
INDIAN
Young and Rooted. Ancient and Futuristic. Respectful and Innovative.
CRAFT
Artisanal, Handcrafted. Creative, Artistic, Cultural
BREWERY
Brewing the best beer ever, naturally. For everyone.
Designing ICB
Tapping into the Indic roots of our civilisation, revisiting our culture, Spread’s design of ICB Indian Craft Brewery is that of an institution which will evolve constantly. That understands your hunger, your tastes, your desire for connection, your thirst for adventure and crafts fulfilment.
Turning ordinary everyday experience into Extraordinary. Longing into belonging. A place of possibility turning emptiness into fulfilment. Where you are ‘Crafting Happiness’.
The design process began with qualitative design research across nine of Bengaluru’s leading microbreweries, immersing ourselves in their spaces to uncover what truly makes customers feel important, cared for, and emotionally connected — the subtle cues that turn visits into lasting memories.
In parallel, we scanned global innovations in craft spirits and experiential branding, drawing inspiration from how the world’s best reimagine hospitality, storytelling, and engagement. The synthesis of these insights shaped a deeper understanding of how brand, space, and service can come together to elevate the brewery experience.
We went back and forth in time, to the Indus Valley. To discover Vari in the Indic seals – a symbol from Indic seals representing an unbroken pilgrimage tradition where young men carry water for miles.
Shouldering barrels of precious liquid. With ceremonial headgear. That also represents the water jug. Reminding us that we are nothing without water. We are water. Vari is always there to quench your thirst.
The Vari symbol signifies each one of us on our spiritual journey in life. Carrying what we need for our sustenance.
Given the importance of water in our lives, Spread felt that the symbol should represent the design 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
Deep and elemental design
The mighty Indus River rips its sediments from the high valleys of the Himalayas. Barley, wheat, einkorn and emmer were cultivated in the ancient cities of the Indus Valley Civilization.
On these agricultural foundations, the inhabitants developed metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, tin) and crafts. Their seals are indicative of an advanced cultural development. Archaeologists have discovered utensils for brewing beer.
Apart from the numerous earthenware pots and some large jars, a tomb of Harappa yielded a perforated pot placed in a jar among other vases and drinking cups.
The look of ICB is Primal and New.
Elemental. Metallic. Vibrant Naturals.
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.
Pictorial seals were used to keep a record of wealth. Varg, Spread’s custom font based on square Indic seals gives language to the brand.
The typography of the Brand follows beer codes. But it is an original crafted typeface. Represented in elemental hues : silver, copper, gold, slate etc.
Creating a new Beerspeak : Beernama for indic flavours. Beeroglyphs – a series of illustrations with custom typography tell tales of long forgotten stories and shape the brand experience. For no words are required in a land of many languages and dialects.
Designing the mythical beasts for ICB has been a journey of imagination, craft, and relentless prototyping.
Each sculptural form was first conceived as a narrative sketch—beasts that could embody protection, revelry, and myth while feeling timelessly modern. At the Spread Design Barn, the process came alive: scaled models were carved, materials tested, and details refined to capture both power and fluidity.
The team explored materials, experimenting with textures, finishes, and lighting integrations to make every curve dramatic yet approachable.
From hand-drawn drafts to full-scale mock-ups, the Barn became a laboratory of form and feeling, where artistry met engineering.
The effort was not just about creating sculptures, but about crafting guardians of the space—icons that would hold presence, invite wonder, and shape the soul of ICB’s experience.
Light, fresh, fun and glocal.
We named ICB’s beers keeping the mood light, fresh, fun and glocal. Inspired by the spirit of Bengaluru and ICB’s Costarican Master Brewer. Each word is a sip-sized promise — light on the palate, fresh in character, fun in experience, and glocal in its blend of global brewing styles with a local Bengaluru soul.
Wit Maga
Belgian Wit meets the Bengaluru Maga, crafting sunshine in a mug!
Happyweizen
When yeast met wheat, Happiness was born. Cloudy. Golden. Refreshing.
El Chamraj
Mexico’s tribute to the iconic Chamrajpet, a chill lager, served in a glass.
Gose Garu
Born in Germany, brewed in Telangana, Served in Bengaluru! Good vibes only!
Nandi Nectar
Brewed with honey foraged from India’s secret forests, the drink of the celestials.
For those sweet, sinful cravings.
Ale is well
Hazy, juicy and light…just the way you want it!
Raseela Cider
Crispy, fruity, flirty, Namma Bengaluru’s apple-icious buzz.
Red Raja
Ruling your taste buds with rich malts, smooth finish, and a hint of Bengaluru’s bold spirit.
Rowdy Stout
Velvety chocolate, roasted malts and Indian coffee. Turning on Bengaluru’s rowdy charm!
Ramanujan
The perfect NAB (Non Alcoholic Beverage), raising a toast to Ramanujan, the iconic Indian mathematician, the man who knew infinity.
For ICB, Spread designed and prototyped 15 distinct sets of uniforms tailored to every role—from brewers to bartenders, chefs to servers—each crafted to balance functionality, comfort, and brand expression. The process went through seven rigorous rounds of prototyping, refining fits, fabrics, and finishes until every detail felt just right. At the heart of this effort was the Design Barn, the epicenter of experimentation and iteration. Here, sketches turned into samples, samples into trials, and trials into perfected uniforms that not only looked the part but also empowered the people wearing them.
Every individual serving you at ICB is a Vari—a guardian of the spirit and soul of the place. With Crafting Happiness stitched onto the sleeve, the uniform becomes more than attire. It’s a badge of pride, a reminder that every pour, every plate, every smile is part of something larger.
The shades themselves draw from the elemental palette of the brewery—copper echoing the gleam of brewing vessels, slate reflecting the raw earth and stone. Designed to move with the rhythm of the brewery and the energy of its people, these uniforms embody the identity of ICB, carrying forward its promise of joy in every detail.
The experience design at ICB was imagined as a sacred space. Where scale, Indic soul, and craft spirit converge. At its heart stands the VARI, monumental in presence yet fluid in form, a guardian of the soul that watches over the energy of the place.
It anchors the experience, making the brewery feel not only vibrant and alive but also deeply rooted, like a keeper of stories waiting to be shared.
The food experience flows seamlessly, with small plates crafted for sharing, pairings that celebrate Indian flavors, and detailing inspired by the Indus Valley Civilization. Crafted in brass and khansa, each element — from the plate in your hand to the bite you savor, to the glass filled with good vibes — is designed to echo heritage while elevating it into a contemporary dining moment, all while carrying forward the timeless Indic spirit.
Natural Beer and sustainability
At Spread, we believe renewal and regeneration must drive every future-facing brand. For ICB, this meant weaving sustainability and circularity into its very core—because beer, at its purest, is only water, barley, and hops.
Water, the lifeblood of civilizations, has always been sacred to India. From the water intelligence of the Indus Valley, where communities thrived on intricate systems of conservation and flow, to the tradition of the Vari, the humble water carrier, water has symbolized sustenance, continuity, and purity. In beer, too, water is the soul—the element that washes us clean, leaving behind our truest selves.
At the outset, ICB partnered with sustainability experts to transform brewing byproducts into nourishing solutions. The result is a brand that celebrates nature’s cycle: beer that is rooted in heritage, brewed with integrity, and alive with the spirit of renewal—where celebration and sustainability don’t just coexist, they flow together.
“What the world needs is a little imagination! Spread has been designed as an imagination ecosystem. To navigate conceptual complexity, anticipate shifts and create the next big original thing that breaks us out of patterns of mediocrity and repetition and opens up entirely fresh possibilities.”
Sonia Manchanda
Founding Partner, Spread Design and Innovation
Board Member, World Design Organisation
Indian Design in a global context
Design is the new strategy. Experience is the new currency.
There is opportunity in original ideas that derive from our culture and are sensitive to people, planet, places and profit. Indian Design has a rich heritage of ideas and craftsmanship. We can tap into our roots to craft the new and reimagine the way we do business, learn and educate, govern society, create and consume, live and work.
Human expectation is evolving and Spread Design and Innovation feels the shifts, anticipates the future and designs solutions, systems and experiences that redefine culture.
Focusing on ‘what can be’. Strategizing the next big imagination properties.
As a design and imagination ecosystem from India. For India. To design, build and spread bold ideas. As a member of WDO (World Design Organisation), putting India on the global map through its work and its voice.
In Spread’s tenth year, this spirit of ambition and imagination has been recognized on the global stage, with winning the prestigious Red Dot Design Award.
