Fort George Brewery

Extensive branding & marketing projects

How do you launch a brewpub in a small, blue-collar town, and grow it into a mighty force of Northwest brewcraft?

Fort George Brewery did it with award-winning beers, a strong community, and a tight collaboration with Plazm. The company began as a small, eight-barrel brewery, leasing a corner of an old building in Astoria, Oregon. Formerly a bustling river port with a booming business in fish canneries, Astoria struggled since the canneries closed down in the 1980s (when it also served as the location for the beloved film Goonies).

Fort George brought canning back to Astoria, along with increased tourism. Building a powerful and honest brand, our projects expand with the brewery’s business—which now occupies two full city blocks. A full cannery, restaurants, tasting rooms, and public gardens are among its offerings. The brewery hosts community events including the Festival of Dark Arts Festival, bolstering civic pride and encouraging local artisanship, music, and craft.

Services delivered: Branding, Content, Packaging

Our City of Dreams can design features an illustration by Carson Ellis.
The Fort.
Packaging for three evolving, limited edition Fort George beers. Each explore a certain style: Fields of Green = hops, Skies of Wonder = imperial IPA, Waves of Silence = stouts). Each gets a code name, when the batch is gone it’s gone. Details here. Embracing change in the design through use of thermochromatic heat sensitive inks. This feature also serves to alert the drinker to their need for another beer.⠀🍻cheers🍻
Packaging system—and the first year's worth of bottles—for the Fort's "Sweet Virginia Series," a small-batch, limited edition bottling series named after the original 8.5 BBL brewery.
32 oz. "crowler" — these to-go containers can be purchased and filled at the brewery in Astoria.