Room for new drinkers, without losing the faithful.

How do you bring a much-loved brand to a new generation without losing the loyal following it already has? Hobgoblin is one of Britain's best-known character ales, one of several in the Carlsberg Marston's portfolio we've rebranded. It had built a loyal following over decades, with a mischievous goblin as recognisable as the beer itself, but its audience was ageing with it, so reaching the next generation meant moving while the brand was strong, rather than waiting until it wasn't.

The difficulty kept pointing back at the design, since the very thing the loyalists loved was the thing holding newcomers back. To the faithful, the busy, intricate, fantasy illustration was exactly the appeal, but to the younger drinker, at home in craft and its range of flavours and styles, that same design felt static, inaccessible and even a little menacing. The range had grown without a clear order to it too, so Ruby, Gold and IPA didn't obviously read as one family or tell a drinker where to start.

We began on the shelf, not the drawing board, auditing the portfolio and how it sat in the aisle. That set the framework for a core-variant architecture, with Hobgoblin leading and each beer given its own clear place, so the range can be read at a glance. With the structure settled, the identity was where the real work lay and because the goblin is the brand's whole equity, the question was never how much we could change but how little we needed to. 

What followed was one ongoing, collaborative process, the wordmark and character redrawn by hand with a pen-and-ink illustrator, evolving through round after round of client and research feedback. The goblin moved from the over-humanised, fantasy-heavy original toward a rougher, more authentic woodcut feel, keeping him mischievous and cheeky, rather than sinister. What emerged is unmistakably the same goblin, cleaner and more contemporary, so the thing drinkers loved now works as the brand's signpost rather than its barrier.