A YORK design agency has picked up a national award in recognition of its work with one of the city’s breweries.

United by Design, based in The Mount, picked up a gold Design Business Association (DBA) Design Effectiveness Award for its work with craft brewery and tap room Brew York.

The awards, which recognise projects that demonstrate design’s effect on a business by drawing focus onto how design can improve strategic and commercial value of a brand, were presented last week at The Brewery in central London, by Matt Hancock MP, secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport.

United by Design managing director Owen Turner said: “The great thing about the Design Effectiveness Awards is that they’re no airy-fairy accolade. They’re all about recognising where design has had a real-life, measurable effect on business.

“Our designs for Brew York helped win those all-important supermarket listings. It’s all very well praising clever design - but these awards are about celebrating commercial success.”

The two York firms first joined forces in 2015, when Brew York asked United by Design to create the branding and packaging for its full range.

The teams have taken a very collaborative approach to design and brand development, taking this local home brew from the garage to the shelves of Asda and Tesco within 12 months of starting to trade.

From launch in March 2016, the brewery has increased production by 500 per cent and quickly risen to be among the top 45 per cent of SIBA (Society of Independent Brewers) in terms of turnover. And it’s continuing to thrive, averaging 27 per cent month on month growth.

Brew York co-founder Lee Grabham said: “The strength of our branding, design and packaging means we’ve already beaten some of the commercial objectives we built into our three to five year business plan - within our first nine months of brewing and trading.”

The award win marks the second time in the limelight for United by Design. The team won a silver DBA Design Effectiveness Award in 2015, for their work with an other brewery, Treboom, based in Shipton-by-Beningborough.

Mr Turner said: “We actually work with businesses from a huge range of sectors, so it’s a strange coincidence that our two big award-winners are local breweries. It’s great news for the city though and proves our streets are peppered with cutting edge businesses.”