Crush City is a moniker that originated from the “crushing” bats of the Houston Astros Baseball team. Iconic Houston rapper Bun B recorded a “Crush City” freestyle that the Astros used as their in-stadium theme song for the 2016 season (and beyond). The client had a preexisting brand that was dangerously close to intellectual property owned by another… canned beverage company. Yeah, that’s what we’ll call it.

This brand was being introduced to a much wider audience than it had at the time; Crush City was entering the core brand lineup. This was a sink or swim situation with a ton of pressure and high expectations! My task was to use an existing name and a color palette to craft a recognizable and memorable brand distanced from the possibilities of copyright lawsuits. The beer (and brewery) were hyper local, and I was pretty new to the city, so there was a ton of research and context gathering that needed to happen. I organized a few customer surveys and hung out at a couple of local sports bars to get a clue on what made Houston well… Houston.

The initial brainstorming involved crossing sports and Houston iconography. With no true lanes to operate in, I was able to deep dive and riff in as many different directions as possible. While a few of the ideas would have made for awesome merch and marketing, they would’ve taken more capital (time and budget) than was available to show the ROI required.

After pouring over the data I collected, two things stood out: Houston loves space… and street art. Watching a few Astro’s games and hanging out in the area around the stadium lit a fire and uncovered a few hooks to build from. On one of the main highways into downtown, a very popular graffiti tag exists on a train bridge that crosses over all lanes. This “BE SOMEONE” throw up is a pretty iconic piece, and with a convo through another of the city’s artists, we got the okay to riff off of his piece.

There was still the need to sneak some connections to the ‘Stros into the design. Some revisions via creative direction lead to an altered version of the ‘Stros nostalgic “rainbow” stripes earned their way into the design.  This was a calculated risk that gave the brand proximity to the team without infringing. A few icons that speak to Houston’s history (the Challenger space shuttle, an oil tanker, the ‘Stros homerun train) placed on the train tracks and we’re cooking with gas!

Crush City has become one of the top sellers for the company overall and in the top 3 selling IPAs in Houston! Brand recognition, merch, and