New Design Campaign with YARD NYC

Threes Brewing began with the establishment of the original brewpub and taproom in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where Stephen Niedzwiecki, Creative Co-Founder of Yard NYC had lived at the time. He loved the brand idea and saw an opportunity to help build and define Threes as a distinctive brand in the marketplace. He started by leaning into where Threes Brewing was born.

He took photographs of the Gowanus Canal, using its waters and movements, combined with graphics based on mid-century Western European poster designs—like those from the Bauhaus, and Swiss designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, a pioneer of the International Typographic Style—to develop the graphic packaging that would help set Threes cans apart. This graphic approach, with clean lines, bold colors, and clever illustrations, is a masterful adaptation of classic styles, and manages to captivate, relate back to Threes' iconoclastic names for their beers, and yet capture its deep ties to the neighborhood. Niedzwiecki’s original mood boards for Threes contain much of Müller-Brockmann’s work, whom Niedzwiecki actually met when he was a student in the late 1980s. “It changed my life,” he says.

New Launch

In collaboration with Yard, NYC, Gowanus sensation Threes Brewery is now launching four new labels for the brand’s newest craft beer offerings: Wink Wink west coast pilsner; Illogical Conclusion dry-hopped double IPA; All or Everything West coast IPA; and Shapeless Days summer seasonal pilsner.

The project originated from the desire to represent Threes birthplace, staying true to its roots in the Brooklyn area. Once a small local brewery, far from the company’s current status, the beer took center stage. The brewery wanted to emulate that with their newest offerings, by making the playful imagery and product the focus rather than the brand name.

“I wanted the cans to look like mini pieces of art, like they could have easily been a book cover or poster,” says Niedzwiecki, who looked all the way back to the Bauhaus, and then Dutch and Swedish poster design of the 1940s, 50s and 60s for inspiration. The colorful, playful but balanced graphic images delight and match the wit of the beers’ names (such as Unreliable Narrator, Fools Errand, and Bad Wallpaper) as they capture your eye.

Design Features
In the four new labels, Niedzwiecki did not want to deviate from these graphic and pleasing directions.
A pool cue, in classic 2H pencil orange, lines up an eight-ball over undulating green and blue waves for Wink Wink, a knowing nod to their West Coast Pilsner drinkers.
Illogical Conclusion, their DDH Hazy Double IPA, features orange and yellow illustrated fists, giving a thumbs up (or is it down?) as they circle the letters on the can.
All or Everything, a West Coast IPA
Shapeless Days, a seasonal pilsner for the summer time, features a shapely swimmer, or the leggy half of her that is not submerged in the easy orange waters colored by the sun setting in the distance, as if to say, in a winky way: “Bottoms up.”