Note: This is the first in a series called ‘The Startup Dialogues’ which will focus on a different aspect of starting a brewery in each post. For my first interview, I talked with Jonathan from Monday Night Brewing – an Atlanta-based craft brewery in planning with the mantra ‘Weekends Are Overrated.’ We discussed branding, labeling, and packaging.

When you were initially thinking about the concept, how forward thinking were you? Were you looking for something to show your friends or envisioning your bottles in stores across the country? Or somewhere in between?

When we first started planning a brewery, we were definitely thinking long-term. As we developed the brand over the next 2 years, we considered where people would have contact with our brand as a startup brewery and designed around that. We wouldn’t have money for commercials or billboards or print ads. Taps, bottles and six pack carriers would be our primary means of “marketing” so the brand had to work in those arenas, and had to be distinctive in context (versus other beers on the shelf or other taps at the bar).

What efforts did you take to create your brand?

A lot of brainstorming. Many a night was spent arguing with Jeff and Joel over beer names. As the Marketing Guy and Master of Mind Control, I had the most at stake, so I would think about our brand constantly. While falling asleep or showering. I also dabble in design, so I created the initial designs.

What efforts have you taken to develop your brand?

We’ve concentrated most of our resources on growing our brand presence on the web pre-launch, simply because we don’t have a lot of resources. We also view the actual brewing on Monday nights as an integral piece of our “brand experience.” It’s not like we have MONDAY NIGHT plastered up everywhere, but there’s a general vibe of camaraderie, transparency, meeting new people, and relaxing after a day’s work. We did a complete logo redesign about a year and a half in, which was emotionally exhausting.

What went into developing the name for the brewery?

The name was actually the easiest for us because it was grounded in who we are and what we are about. We started brewing every Monday night. Hence, Monday Night Brewing.

Did you have other ideas for the name? If so, how did you test the various names?

Nope. Monday Night was one of the first names we considered and there was a general consensus that it fit. My mom actually suggested “3 J’s Brewing” because all three owners have names starting with J. But I think Three Floyds would have put a hit out against us.

How did you develop concepts/ideas for logo and label design?

We knew we wanted our logo to stand out. And on labels we wanted our logo to be big, which meant it had to be changeable depending on the beer. Initially we started with a monk as our logo because monks brew beer and we were born out of a bible study. Which made sense at the time. But we realized that what we were really about was weeknights. Monday Night was where it was at, and there was no discernible connection between monks and Mondays in our logo. So we decided to change it to make our entire logo (and name) more weeknight-centric.

We spent a lot of time brainstorming new directions and whining to friends, but couldn’t land on anything that felt right. From there we crowdsourced our logo to get new ideas from a lot of designers. There was one that stood out in terms of idea, but needed some help in execution, so we paid them for their work and took it from there ourselves.

Once we had a logo in place, the labels, taps and 6 pack carriers pretty much designed themselves. They came together in my head and all I had to do was spend hours in Adobe Illustrator bringing them to life. We also ran our designs past consumers on our blog and a few people in the industry and made revisions throughout the process.

Did you hire an outside design firm?

We did not. We did crowdsource ideas for the new logo. The final execution is actually a silhouette of Joel, our Operations Guy. We had a little photo shoot at Joel’s house one Saturday to get the outline right, and then edited it ourselves. In terms of direction for the crowdsourcing, we were looking for diversity of ideas, so our primary direction was explaining our brand… We’re a witty, white-collar, Southern cosmopolitan beer brand, and our logo needed to reflect that.

How did you decide on colors?

We tried to choose colors that would stand out on the shelves, so we did a little inventory of the colors most used in beer brands and tried to avoid those. Of course, it’s not an exact science. But we wanted to use bold colors that we loved. The way we built our brand, black and white are the primary colors, and each beer will get 2 shades of one bold color. It should be pretty versatile down the road.

What were your final reasons for selecting the logo?

When we were clearly communicating one unified idea simply with both our logo and our name, we knew we had arrived.

Thanks again to the guys at Monday Night Brewing for their help with this article! Make sure you check out their website and if you’re ever in the Atlanta area, stop by and brew with them on a Monday night!