Leinenkugel’s Website & Brand Activation

Client

Leinenkugel’s

Agency

Soulsight

Role

Designer

Background

Leinenkugel’s is synonymous with summer in the midwest: hot days, lake life, and a refreshing Summer Shandy.

The Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company, also known as Leinenkugel’s, is an American beer maker based in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin known for its fun, festive, and fruit-forward brews. The company is the seventh oldest brewery in the United States, having opened in 1867, and staying in business even through Prohibition. Though it now resides under the umbrella of Molson Coors with national distribution, its personality and brand remain constant.

While Leinenkugel’s produces a wide range of beers—from traditional varieties, like lagers and ales, to more craft style recipes, like weiss and IPAs—it is most known for their shandies, which are a mixture of beer and fruit juices, such as lemonade.

Brief

Renovate leinie.com to be easily navigable, accessible, and brand resonant.

The client wanted to overhaul their existing website to present as contemporary, user-friendly, intuitive, and brand-resonant, and wanted the new website to launch alongside their latest campaign assets. In order for the design solution to be successful, the new site needed to maintain existing content and overall structure, but improve and modernize all UI elements to increase clarity in navigation for all users, streamline visual communication, establish consistency among branded elements, and achieve ADA compliance.

Website

The final solution for the website redesign prioritized navigation, branding, and accessibility. A sticky header on both desktop and mobile allows the user to navigate anywhere at any time, while the availability of multiple pathways per page encourages the user to keep exploring and stay engaged. Graphic treatments for headlines and CTAs employ visual nods to the brand and the use of color is clean and consistent, though the brand’s traditional gold has been adjusted for digital use in order to meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards for type and graphic elements.

Interact with a full site prototype at the link below.

Go to prototype

Activation assets

In conjunction with the website launch, the client requested new activation pieces to be used primarily out-of-home and on social media. We constructed a variety of assets for immediate placement that would also serve as a template for successful future activation placements. With that said, those pieces needed to cover all possible product style and season combinations, as well as both landscape and portrait orientations.

Activation guidelines

In addition to providing OOH and Social assets for this particular activation, we created a set of user guidelines for successful future activation pieces, inclusive of: strategy, branded elements, and activation-specific guidance.