Estudio Cariño invents HOUSE of CALLAGHAN, an Irish stout brand

Estudio Cariño designed HOUSE of CALLAGHAN, a brand of Irish stout from Cork, for nobody. “This project originated from a rejected proposal for a beer-related client, but we liked it too much to leave it there, so we kept working on it,” Co-founders José Pablo Salazar and Iván Soto Camba tell us. “Once there was no client involved, there was also no brief to follow and nobody asking us to tone anything down.” Between them, the Mexican design duo came up with the name, story, identity and label design. Cork is home to two long-established stouts, Murphy's and Beamish. HOUSE of CALLAGHAN was designed to look like it had always been the third. “We borrowed a little from the language of Game of Thrones and used ‘House’ in the name because it suggested family history and, indirectly, something made on a smaller, more traditional scale,” Salazar and Soto Camba explain. “Callaghan is a common surname in the region, so it also helped ground the brand in Cork. We wanted the name to sound like it could have been there for a long while.” The label sets out an invented Callaghan family history, signed by a brewer who does not exist either. “We wanted it to look less like a new identity and more like a brand we had somehow found,” the duo adds. “It’s very easy for an Irish beer brand to stop looking Irish and start looking Irish-themed,” they detail. “The shamrock was the most obvious problem. We still used it, but only as a small decorative element.” The studio wanted to work from beer, a big part of Irish culture, rather than from a collection of Irish symbols. The Celtic-looking type is another familiar reference, and it sits next to muted colours and metal finishes that are inspired by the medieval era. “The starting point was something classic, but not old-fashioned,” they explain. “We wanted local references to be recognisable without making the brand look nostalgic.”