Can a brand-new brand ever be timeless?
Startups often ask for a timeless brand, but timelessness can’t be declared on day one. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl argues that timelessness is really heritage, and that a new brand can only build the aspects needed to become timeless. He walks through Parliament’s redesign of Rainier Beer, where more than a century of history became the key differentiator and a hard-won decision to give the big red R a full side of the can showed why designers need conviction their clients don’t always have. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on timelessness, What the F*ck Is Timelessness?.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl answers a question that comes up constantly with new clients: can a new brand be timeless? Probably not, he says. A new brand can have the aspects needed to become timeless, but declaring itself a classic is like giving yourself a nickname.
That’s because authentic timelessness is heritage. When Parliament redesigned Rainier Beer, it had something new beer brands lack: more than a century of history, including some form of the big red R logo for over 100 years. The old logos, packaging, and advertising weren’t liabilities but differentiators no competitor could replicate, unlike craft breweries faking a rugged history.
After hundreds of explorations, the team simplified the can to its most essential form, redrew the logotype, and gave one full side to the big red R. That choice took many meetings to win, and Calvin calls it a great example of the conviction designers need to bring.
Highlights
A new brand can’t declare itself timeless.
Authentic timelessness comes from heritage.
Rainier’s century of history was its key differentiator.
Giving the big red R a full side of the can took many meetings to approve.
The goal was a can that looks undesigned and classic.
Key insights
Timelessness is earned, not claimed
A startup can build the right foundations, but calling itself a classic undermines the very quality it wants.
History is an asset in a rebrand
Old logos, packaging, and advertising are often treated as baggage. Calvin sees them as differentiators competitors can’t take away or copy.
Faked heritage reads as fake
Craft breweries adopting a rugged, historic look without the years behind it showed how quickly people notice borrowed history.
Designers need conviction
Putting just the mark on one side of the can felt risky to the client. Seeing it through required the agency to hold confidence the client didn’t yet have.
Detailed analysis
The clip ties the abstract idea of timelessness to a concrete rebrand. Rainier’s advantage wasn’t a design trick; it was time. Parliament’s job was to recognize which elements carried that time, like the big red R and the hidden mountain, and strip away everything else.
The process also shows how restraint can be the bold choice. After wild explorations, the strongest answer was the simplest can Rainier had ever had, one that looks like a classic beer rather than a designed object.
Conclusion
Timelessness, Calvin says, is accumulated meaning: an expression of heritage generated over generations. New brands can prepare for it, and established brands like Rainier can make the most of it by trusting their history.
Transcript
So that then asks the question: can a new brand be timeless? And no, not really. Maybe. Probably not, though. I don’t think you can create a new brand that gets the feeling of timelessness that we often talk about. And that comes up all the time when you’re working on a new brand with clients or with organizations, where they ask for timelessness, and it’s like, you’re a brand-new startup. That’s just not possible. But we can create something with the aspects needed to become timeless. You just can’t declare it as timeless. You can’t say it’s a classic. That’s like giving yourself a nickname, basically, which we all know is not cool.
So what that points us to, then, is that if a new brand can’t necessarily key in on timelessness, that’s probably because timelessness just is heritage. That’s where the authentic timelessness comes from.
For example, let me pull this up here. When we redesigned the classic Rainier beer logo and packaging, we had something that new beer brands just don’t have, and that is time. We had over a century of time behind Rainier. They’ve had some form of this classic big red R logo for well over a hundred years. Their brand at large is kind of a classic, regional, playful, irreverent outdoor brand. They’re about the myth of the Northwest, but aesthetically they have always been this really beautiful, simple blank canvas that just has the mountain hidden away in here. It’s the big red R. It’s great.
And so when we think about what heritage means in this, heritage is all that stuff. It’s the old logo, the old packaging, the old advertisements, over a hundred years of history. I think a lot of people think those are liabilities when doing a rebrand, but actually those are our key differentiators. Those are key differentiators that no other competitors can take away from us, that no other competitors can replicate. That’s why, when there was the huge explosion of craft breweries and they tried to do this old, rugged, historic kind of thing, it just felt like [bleep], because then you’d see, oh, I’m looking at a beer that was established in 2019, and you’re like, you don’t have the years of heritage backing it up. You are faking the history.
And so when we designed Rainier, I think we’ve actually got a fun photo in here. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, here’s a great photo. We did hundreds of designs that took the brand, the packaging—damn it, Aaron. Okay, Logan. I’ll explain the Logan story another time.
We did crazy explorations. We went wild with the cans to push the limits of where it actually goes. And we ended up finding that reducing everything back to the simplest form of the Rainier can to ever exist was the way to go. Include the key elements. We redrew the logotype. Cleaned up the can. Dramatically simplified it. Went super white. Made one side of the can just the big red R, which is their most memorable thing.
Putting the big red R on just one side of the can was a huge debate we had with the client, because it’s scary. It’s risky to put on the side of your can. It’s not even the name of the company. One whole side is just the mark. And that took a lot of meetings to get through, and now everyone gets it. It’s a huge moment for them. They’ll do a redesign someday—it’s been a few years—but it would blow my mind if they took away the big red R on one side of the can and on the side of the package. It took a lot of debate to do that.
And that’s the kind of thing I was talking about: it’s our job to instill confidence in the client when they might not have it. We need to have conviction that the client doesn’t always have. So that was a great win here. I love this one. And I think the reason I also like it is it looks nice. It’s simple, but it’s not overly designed. It doesn’t look designy. It looks just like a classic beer. And that was the biggest challenge: how do you create something that is undesigned and just has that timeless heritage in it?
So, okay. That’s kind of what timelessness really is. It’s accumulated meaning. It’s an expression of heritage, and meaning generated over generations.