Blue Blaze Brewing Company is a craft brewery in Charlotte, NC, built around the hiking and outdoor lifestyle. In the spring of 2014, Blue Blaze’s owners approached Sublmnl with a clear vision: to bring a taste of the wilderness into the big city. We built the brand around that idea from day one.

The Challenge
Outdoor lifestyle branding has grown into one of the most powerful trends in craft beverage marketing, especially as more consumers seek brands that reflect an active, adventure-driven identity rather than just a product. Blue Blaze needed an authentic tie to real hiking and trail culture, not just outdoor imagery slapped on a label, but a brand genuinely rooted in the language and symbols hikers actually recognize.

A Brand Built on Trail Markings
A “blaze” is a real trail-marking system—typically a painted mark on a tree or rock—that helps hikers navigate a path, signaling everything from a trailhead to a change in direction or a nearby water source. We built that concept directly into Blue Blaze’s brand, shaping the primary logo itself as an actual trail blaze. We extended the connection further by using the same fonts and arrow treatments found on official National Park Service trailhead signage. We named each beer in the core lineup after a different blaze color, using the same bold, high-visibility color schemes trail blazes use to stand out in the forest.

Modern Packaging With a Minimalist Twist
When it came to packaging, we took an unconventional approach for the time: instead of covering the can in color, we let the raw brightness of the aluminum shine through the label design, a bold, minimalist packaging choice that no one else in the craft beer segment was doing at the time, and one that’s since become a much more widely adopted trend across the industry as brands lean into cleaner, more modern can aesthetics.

The Result
Blue Blaze’s brand is rooted in the outdoors but built with a distinctly modern edge, a genuinely differentiated identity in the North Carolina craft beer scene. Over a decade into its retail presence, the brand still stands out on the shelf, a testament to building an identity around something authentic rather than chasing a passing trend.