BRANDING:
ROLLING MILLS
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THE ORGANISATION
Rolling Mills is a craft brewery based in Mumbai known for its ‘defiantly craft’ voice and experimental brewing culture. Rather than chasing trends or stylistic conformity, the brewery treats each batch as a creative act; unpredictable, expressive, and distinct. And thus, it ends up with more brews over 3 months than a lot of breweries do over years.
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THE GOAL
To design an identity that was neither rigid nor repetitive, but flexible enough to meaningfully express each new concept. The task was not to define a single style, but to articulate a set of visual behaviours that allowed the brand to remain recognisably itself across widely divergent executions. Each label needed to be treated as its own art piece — loud, intentional, and provocative — while still contributing to a coherent brand language.
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THE PROBLEM
Rolling Mills needed a visual language as experimental as its beers. Each brew had its own story, texture, and tone, making traditional brand systems too rigid. The goal was packaging that adapts to each beer’s individuality. Creating an identity system that reflects constant experimentation while still feeling cohesive and true to the brewery’s voice.
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MY ROLE
Creative direction, strategy, copy, design and print readiness across all labels. Working at a weekly cadence, the role demanded both rapid ideation and consistent authorial voice.
THE SOLUTION
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THE CCI
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Instead of defining a static set of guidelines, the identity was built on principles of controlled variation: a brand language that could flex between extremes of expression and structure.
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A few pillars defined this language.​
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The can as an Artboard – The labels are printed on cans, and each can is to be divided into thirds. One third of the can is the brand in itself, another third the regulatory requirements, and the last third the defining characteristics of the beer. ​
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Colour as Ingredient – Palettes are to be derived from the sensory and material qualities of each brew, allowing colour to communicate flavour and mood before text does.​​
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Typography as Behaviour – Type choices are not to be treated as brand assets, but as expressive tools. Structure, weight, compression, and hierarchy responded to the personality of each beer.
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Concept Before Style – Every label must begin with a conceptual stance rather than an aesthetic reference, ensuring variation comes from meaning and craft rather than trend.​
The Rule of Third division with further safety and division areas
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These systems created three worlds of Rolling Mills –
THE WORLDS:
MAXIMALIST
EXPRESSION
THE DRINKING
THINKER
STRUCTURED
CONTROL
MAXIMALIST EXPRESSION
At one end of the spectrum, labels embraced visual instability, texture, and anti-hierarchy as forms of expressive rebellion. These early pieces drew from glitch aesthetics, collage logic, and unexpected portraiture to create immediate visual impact.
System Death
A deliberate rejection of packaging decorum. Visual noise, distortion, and anti-hierarchy are used like intentional print errors. With an aim to disrupt visual norms and echoing the smoked weizenbock’s unruly, untamed character.
Hail Noona
Personal imagery acts as a point of rupture, displacing brand iconography with intimate, culturally rooted photography to mimic the brewing method. Purity laws be damned, it’s brewed like a grandma seasons.
Sugar Daddy
Glitch aesthetics signal excess and instability, echoing the beer’s lush, overflowing flavour while pushing legibility to the brink without losing typographic control. A Magritte-inspired take on a recognisable billionaire’s face adds surreal tension between familiarity and absurdity, amplifying the sense of overload.
THE DRINKING THINKER
As the suite of releases expanded, the visual language matured. Typography and composition began to act as narrative devices rather than mere surface effects, with conceptual cues
— psychological, cultural, emotional — driving form.
Default Male
Masculinity becomes a layout system. The composition is rigid, emotionally closed off, and spatially distant — typography performing the same detachment it critiques. Devnagri type anchors the work in a distinctly Indian context, confronting a culturally familiar version
of male identity.
Divorce
Referencing the wedding roots of Oktoberfest, Divorce acts as a counterpoint to Mills’ distorted romanticism. Found Cupid imagery and typographic disruption reframe love not as ideal, but as fragile, negotiated, and subject to collapse
Rorschach
A double hazy NEIPA, open to interpretation. Symmetry and inkblot logic mirror the viewer’s own projections, aligning the visual structure with psychological perception.
STRUCTURED CONTROL
At the opposite end, the brand demonstrates restraint. Structured hierarchies, grid logic, and typographic order show that Rolling Mills isn’t defined by chaos, but by its command of control. The identity isn’t a single aesthetic, but a spectrum of expression — unified by intent rather than repetition.
Self-Hell
A cherry witbier framed as a sweet lie, wellness-coded, but indulgent, echoing the promises of self-help culture. The critique lands through mirroring self-help books –bold typographic rhetoric, where colour, copy, and hierarchy carry the concept before imagery ever does.
'84 Pils
Micro-design precision reinforces the idea of control. Fine typographic detailing, measured spacing, and restrained graphic systems echo the rule-bound nature of the beer itself. Institutional grids operate at both macro and micro levels, turning structure into the
message akin to 1984.
Sugar Daddy
A heritage-led rauchbier. Engraving aesthetics, monastic origin imagery, and German brewing law references are contained within matchbox-style typography, creating tension between historical storytelling and strict visual order.
THE DRINKING THINKER
From visual disorder to typographic discipline, Mills explores how far a brand voice can stretch without losing itself. It becomes proof that control and chaos can be tools of the brand system as long as the core of it remains the same.
