A Henninger distributor, a new name and a lager called “myth”.

Mythos — the Greek word for “myth” — was created in 1997, and it came out of a wine business. English Wikipedia says that in 1992 the Boutari group, the Naoussa wine house, bought Henninger Hellas S.A., the Greek company that distributed the German Henninger beer. In 1994 the company was renamed Northern Greece Brewery S.A., as part of a plan to build a domestic Greek brewer, and the new lager was the result.

The Carlsberg Group, which owns the brand today, tells the same story from its side: its history of Greek brewing records that in 1997 “Boutaris Group launches Mythos beer”. The beer did well enough that the company took its name. Carlsberg says the business was renamed Mythos Brewery three years after the launch, while English Wikipedia dates the change to Mythos Brewery S.A. to 2001.

The beer itself is a light, straw-coloured lager at 5 per cent, English Wikipedia says, citing the brand. It is sold in 330 ml and 500 ml bottles and cans, and has been joined by Mythos Ice, which is filtered and chilled to below zero, a lemon Mythos Radler and an alcohol-free version. A darker Mythos Red, introduced in 2007, was later discontinued. Wikipedia lists exports to a number of European countries as well as the United States, Canada, Panama, Taiwan, Israel and Australia.

A unicorn simplified so that its mane reads as sun and its crest as sea.

The Mythos mark is a unicorn, set beside an italic wordmark. In July 2022 the packaging-design site Lovely Package published a redesign of the brand credited to Luminous Design Group, a studio in Greece. According to the write-up, the aim was to redraw the unicorn so that it conveyed the brand’s values; the result is simpler and bolder, with a mane that suggests rays of sun and a top that suggests sea waves.

The same write-up says the italic typography and the unicorn together form the centrepiece of the label, and that the italic was chosen to suggest motion. The concept was built on the line “There’s a myth everywhere”, and the label carries the descriptor “Hellenic Premium Beer”. Luminous also created a distinctive die-cut label shape, which the write-up says can be carried over to cans as a graphic element, and removed unnecessary text and busy decoration from the pack.

That redesign was the latest in a run of changes the brand lists on its own Greek site. Mythos says the original recipe came from a Greek master brewer drawing on the know-how of European brewing schools. Its timeline then records an embossed bottle introduced after 2008, the launch of Mythos Radler in 2014, a modern label and an easy-open cap in 2016, a new red cap in 2018 — presented as a step forward “on our unicorn” — and the launch of Mythos Ice in 2020. The Greek site also uses the line “παντού υπάρχει ένας Μύθος” — “there’s a myth everywhere” — in its own copy.

The result is a brand that leans on two ideas at once: a creature from myth for the name, and the Greek summer — sun and sea — drawn into the creature itself. That pairing lets the same unicorn work on a bottle label, a can and the brand’s spin-offs without needing more explanation.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are drinks names from Greece, Cyprus and Turkey: Barbayanni, Vallindras, KEO, Mythos, Babatzim, Efe Rakı and Tekirdağ Rakı. Around the eastern Mediterranean, anise spirits, grape spirits, citron liqueur, wine and beer sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that began inside a state monopoly or now belong to much larger drinks groups.

A drinks brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually distilled, brewed or bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a wine group to a British brewer, and then to Carlsberg.

The brewery did not stay with its founders for long. English Wikipedia says the British brewer Scottish & Newcastle became the majority shareholder in 2004. Four years later Scottish & Newcastle itself was taken over by a consortium of Carlsberg and Heineken; the deal completed on 29 April 2008, and in the division of the business Carlsberg took the Greek operation, Mythos, along with Kronenbourg in France, English Wikipedia’s account of Scottish & Newcastle says. Carlsberg’s own history likewise records that in 2008 it acquired Mythos Brewery.

Carlsberg then combined its Greek holdings. Its history says Mythos Brewery merged with Olympic Brewery in 2015, with the combined company trading under the Olympic Brewery name, and that in 2018 Carlsberg acquired 100 per cent of Olympic Brewery. The Carlsberg Group lists two Greek production sites, at Sindos near Thessaloniki and at Ritsona on Evia, and names Mythos and FIX Hellas as its two major local brands. FIX carries its own long history: Carlsberg dates it to 1864, when Ioannis Fix produced beer in Greece under his family name.

One practical note: “Mythos” is a common name, shared with games, software and other businesses, so the beer’s own site, mythosbeer.gr, and the words “Greek beer” are the useful anchors when searching.

For a design guide, Mythos shows how a young brand can borrow age from its name — a myth, a unicorn — and then make the mark local by drawing sun and sea into the animal itself. Compare Boutari, the Naoussa wine house whose group launched the beer, and Efes, the Turkish pilsner from the other side of the Aegean. For this guide we use Aegean blue, sun-ray gold and myth red with an inscriptional serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Mythos’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.