On a recent weekend afternoon, I found myself in my neighborhood grocery store contemplating a wall of beer. This section of the store is like a candy aisle, filled with rows of brightly colored cans and illustrated boxes that look like they were plucked from a design blog.
Like a sugar-addled child, my eyes darted from one label to the next while I sorted through what makes the hazy IPA with the colorful, abstract drawing on the label any different than the hazy IPA with the sans-serif logo. I came to the conclusion that it really didn’t matter, and grabbed the cheaper six pack.
This level of beer-aisle deliberation is a relatively new phenomenon. Choosing beer used to be easy. There were the old standbys—the Budweisers, the Millers, and the occasional import like Heineken—all with classic labels that made you want to use the word “brewsky.” Today, choosing a beer can require a full-on aesthetic assessment. Even Milton Glaser has something to say about it.
Small, independent brewing is booming, and it’s brought with it a renaissance in beer label design. To put it in perspective: Ten years ago, the United States had 1,650 registered craft breweries; today there are more than 7,300, and that number is only going to grow. This is good news for beer lovers, but bad news for indecisive drinkers who make decisions based on whatever looks cool. The problem we’re facing today, if you can really call it a problem, is that pretty much everything looks cool now.
Beer magazine Caña recently wrote that “beer cans are officially the new record sleeve,” and it’s right. While Big Beer is all about brand recognition and consistency, craft breweries have embraced a more experimental approach, distinguishing themselves with labels designed to catch the eye when you’re scanning the cooler.
“A large percentage of beer lovers walk into a store and don’t know what they’re going to buy,” says Julia Herz, the Craft Beer program director at the Brewers Association, the national organization for craft breweries. “The pressure at retail is to stand out and get noticed.” A good label is a calling card. It’s a chance for breweries to convince you to choose their beer and not the one next to it.
“Design is everything,” Herz adds. “Craft brewers don’t typically have Big Beer advertising budgets. Most of them are doing grassroots marketing, and nothing is more grassroots than your packaging.”
When craft beer was still a small operation, breweries would often design their label in-house or ask a friend or local artist to pull something together for a release. “It was really innocent,” says Oceania Eagan, founder of Blindtiger Design, a Seattle agency that specializes in designing identities for breweries. “That innocence meant people could just hodgepodge things together. You can’t get away with that anymore.” In the last five or so years, craft brewing has reached a level of maturity where breweries have decided it’s worth the time and money to hire a design studio who can help them “professionalize” their look. And accordingly, a crop of design studios like Blindtiger whose primary, if not exclusive, focus is on beer branding have sprung up to take advantage of the growing market.
Like a sugar-addled child, my eyes darted from one label to the next while I sorted through what makes the hazy IPA with the colorful, abstract drawing on the label any different than the hazy IPA with the sans-serif logo. I came to the conclusion that it really didn’t matter, and grabbed the cheaper six pack.
This level of beer-aisle deliberation is a relatively new phenomenon. Choosing beer used to be easy. There were the old standbys—the Budweisers, the Millers, and the occasional import like Heineken—all with classic labels that made you want to use the word “brewsky.” Today, choosing a beer can require a full-on aesthetic assessment. Even Milton Glaser has something to say about it.Small, independent brewing is booming, and it’s brought with it a renaissance in beer label design. To put it in perspective: Ten years ago, the United States had 1,650 registered craft breweries; today there are more than 7,300, and that number is only going to grow. This is good news for beer lovers, but bad news for indecisive drinkers who make decisions based on whatever looks cool. The problem we’re facing today, if you can really call it a problem, is that pretty much everything looks cool now.
Beer magazine Caña recently wrote that “beer cans are officially the new record sleeve,” and it’s right. While Big Beer is all about brand recognition and consistency, craft breweries have embraced a more experimental approach, distinguishing themselves with labels designed to catch the eye when you’re scanning the cooler.
“A large percentage of beer lovers walk into a store and don’t know what they’re going to buy,” says Julia Herz, the Craft Beer program director at the Brewers Association, the national organization for craft breweries. “The pressure at retail is to stand out and get noticed.” A good label is a calling card. It’s a chance for breweries to convince you to choose their beer and not the one next to it.
“Design is everything,” Herz adds. “Craft brewers don’t typically have Big Beer advertising budgets. Most of them are doing grassroots marketing, and nothing is more grassroots than your packaging.”
When craft beer was still a small operation, breweries would often design their label in-house or ask a friend or local artist to pull something together for a release. “It was really innocent,” says Oceania Eagan, founder of Blindtiger Design, a Seattle agency that specializes in designing identities for breweries. “That innocence meant people could just hodgepodge things together. You can’t get away with that anymore.” In the last five or so years, craft brewing has reached a level of maturity where breweries have decided it’s worth the time and money to hire a design studio who can help them “professionalize” their look. And accordingly, a crop of design studios like Blindtiger whose primary, if not exclusive, focus is on beer branding have sprung up to take advantage of the growing market.
by Liz Stinson, Eye on Design | Read more:
Image: Katharina Brenner
