Typo Lager Series: A Collaboration to Reanimate Lettering and Lagers
2SP Brewing Company and Post Typography are teaming up to reanimate the dead styles of lagers and lettering. The collaboration of creating labels for one of the most difficult styles of beer to produce brought the brewers and their designers to a place that they are both most passionate about: redeeming taste.
As a new brewery based just outside of Philadelphia in the working class town of Aston, 2SP has had surprising success with their Delco Lager and their 2SPils, a traditional unfiltered German Pilsner. In an industry that champions IPAs over lagers, 2SP was blindsided that those two beers would become their #1 and #2 sellers. “When we first opened and were getting feedback from bar owners and customers on how our beer was, we thought for sure they would talk about one of our IPA’s. But all we heard about was Delco Lager,” according to Mike Contreras, Director of Sales & Marketing at 2SP.
When asked about what they expected from the Delco Lager, Contreras didn’t set the bar to high, “to be honest, lagers weren’t cool, and we were looking to make a good balanced beer for the working class drinkers in our community. We definitely didn’t think that a craft amber lager would take off in the better beer bars across Philadelphia.” With so few craft lagers available and more drinkers wanting a style that is easy to drink, but with some depth, the beer along with the 2SPils took off. “That’s where the conversation of this collab started with Post Typography. People are quiet about liking lagers and Nolen over at Post thought the same thing about different styles of fonts. We wanted to work together on a project to make these styles great again.’
Not having worked with perishable products before, Post Typography, a Baltimore based firm, was aggressive in pursuing the opportunity to work with 2SP to create their brand identity. Their client portfolio largely consists of print publications like The New York Times and Time Magazine, and design for musicians including John Legend and Future Islands. On top of this the partners in the firm have written a book “Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces,” published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Asked why work with 2SP, Nolen Strals co-founder of Post Typography stated “We thrive with new projects. As a design firm, satisfaction often comes from challenge, not repetition.” Their client relationship continues to be anything but repetitive as seen by the brand identity and design work the firm has done for the brewery. Now the two companies are coming together for a collaboration series of limited 16oz cans that will feature forgotten lettering, like 17th Century Italian calligraphy, and unappreciated lager styles, including hoppy pilsners and dunkels.
Their first beer of the Typo series, which Post Typography will help brew, is a hoppy and bright 5.5% abv pilsner made with calypso and saphir hops called, simply Typo Pils. Post Typography chose to use the nearly-forgotten lettering style called Kurrentschrift, This lettering style was “popular in Germany in the early 20th Century,” says Nolen Strals, partner at Post Typography, “but the Third Reich banned the style and it never really made a comeback afterwards.” Both the design and beer style are more dynamic than as imagined and represent how two seemingly different companies can work together to bring back what they love most in their fields.
On 9/29 Post Typography and 2SP will have a Typo Pils can release at the brewery starting at 6pm. The guys from both Post Typography and 2SP will be hanging out, talking about the project and drinking beers. Look for Post Typography to bring select work they have done in the past that will be on display inside the brewery.
