Hürlimann beer poster

Contributed by Philipp Messner on May 28th, 2021. Artwork published in

1983

The Swiss German slogan on this poster for the Zürich-based Hürlimann brewery can be translated roughly as “a real one…, a round one…, a Hürlimann beer”.

The poster is using the brewery’s corporate font Brauer. The rounded typeface was part of Hürlimann’s logo between 1974 and 1985 and was used on everything from beer mats and bottle labels to street posters and pub signs; from the company’s letterheads and car fleet to the brewery signage system.

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Product (1594)
Food/Beverage (2559)

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Artwork location

Switzerland (912)
Zürich (228)

In Sets

Original Use (Florian Hardwig) (286)
CHUNKY (Annika Phillips) (16)

1 Comment on “Hürlimann beer poster”

Florian Hardwig says:
May 28th, 2021 9:21 am

To avoid any confusion, the shown typeface is not Lineto’s LL Brauer, but rather the custom precursor it is based on, which probably went under a different name. From Lineto’s website:

LL Brauer references the former branding typeface of the Zürich-based Hürlimann brewery, which had been drawn as part of its corporate design by Pierre Miedinger, a nephew of legendary Helvetica designer Max Miedinger.

Following 1974, the font had been used on everything from beer mats and bottle labels to street posters and pub signs; from the company’s letterheads and car fleet to the brewery signage system. But when Hürlimann was acquired by the Carlsberg Group and shut down in 1997, the distinctive brand sign disappeared quickly, and so did the typeface.

Two years later, Elektrosmog revived this typographic feature of Zürich’s cityscape for an arts festival taking place on the brewery’s former premises. With Miedinger’s permission, they reworked his original ink drawings, extending the minimal glyph set into a proper headline font. The brewery’s phased-out brand logos were included in a bonus set.

In 2006, Elektrosmog revisited the design with the help of Philippe Desarzens, creating additional weights to make up a family of three. Five years later, Marco Walser produced further weights for a popular mass-market magazine in the US. After the extension of the character set, some formal revisions and additional polishing, the full family was released in 2019. It is made up of six weights, from a thin to an extra black, with matching italics.

In the meantime, things came full circle in 2017, when Hürlimann chose LL Brauer to rebrand, strengthening the beer’s local ties by taking cues from its 1970s graphics. Where this ‘local beer’ is being brewed, one can only guess – it’s definitely not in Zürich.