The Creatives Behind the Best Beer Labels

Craft beer is riding a wave right now and in an attempt to stand out many breweries are commissioning creatives to dream up some of the most bold and exciting brand packaging out there. We met some of the Northwest's best

Article by Stevie Mackenzie-Smith | 01 Apr 2016

We all understand the appeal of good food packaging. There’s the primary-coloured red, blue and yellow of Bird’s Custard that evokes paint sets and winter nights warmed with pudding. Think of the grinning kid on the side of Kinder chocolate bars; a constant companion on family driving holidays ‘on the continent.’ Did you know that Salvador Dalí designed the Chupa Chups logo? Who can forget the strangely decomposing lion on the metallic tins of Lyle and Sons’ Golden Syrup? Any stubborn child who has thrown themselves onto supermarket floors in defiance of their parents' no’s understands the siren-like allure of shiny, beckoning packaging.

Iconic products aside, there’s still a fair amount of uninspiring design out there, so it’s refreshing when brands commission artists to create packaging that’s easy on the eye, and likely to wink enthusiastically from a shop shelf. In the Northwest, craft breweries and bars are collaborating with local artists to create unique packaging for their beer. It's a given, really, with so many great artists working across our cities; especially when so many of them are subsidising creative careers with bar work. 

“I work for Port Street Beer House doing their social media, so I commissioned myself and nobody objected,” says Manchester-based illustrator David Bailey, who has designed the bar's newly launched takeaway growler bottles. He’s also responsible for the round of beer-pump clips created for Port Street's recent fifth-birthday celebrations, featuring beers from the likes of Arbor, Northern Monk, Cloudwater Brew Co, Squawk, Track and Runaway. “I've never designed pump clips before so I was excited to ask myself to do those, especially as they were for such good breweries,” he says. So what’s the appeal of designing the labels on the stuff we drink? “I've got an unhealthy interest in the unhealthy and banal. Fantasy banal.” 

'The brief is 'do whatever the hell you want''

Manchester-based visual artist Aliyah Hussain is the latest artist to team up with Cloudwater Brew Co, the brewery whose seasonally alternating labels have become a distinctive stalwart of specialty bottle shops and bars. Previous designs have come from DR.ME, Textbook Studio, Hali Santamas and Anna Beam. Hussain’s designs for the spring/summer 2016 range are playful abstracts stamped with wiggling lines, cut-outs and collage. They’re fresh, evoking vitamin D and the joys of drinking cold beers in the warmer months. 

“We try to match our seasonal brewing philosophy with the presentation philosophy,” says Paul Jones, co-founder of Cloudwater Brew Co. Each season the beer bottle labels change to reflect the new ingredients. “I pick an artist whose work I have a strong resonance with and the brief is 'do whatever the hell you want.' They’re often a bit shocked. I get something genuine and rich from that, undisturbed by narrow business or marketing ideas.”

Back in 2014 Liverpool-based design studio SB Studio ran the 100/100 Beer Project in aid of Art Fund. The Liverpool Craft Beer Co created a beer especially for the occasion, and 100 designers set to work creating 100 different beer bottle labels. A quote taken from the project's website states: “There’s something about a beer label: a simple canvas attached to a uniquely appealing product. Every designer wants to do one.”

Mikkeller and Omnipollo

So beyond our fair region, who else is creating exciting beer bottle designs? “I like Omnipollo and Mikkeller,” says Bailey. “Both pretty hard to beat.” Philadelphia-based Keith Shore is current label designer for Mikkeller, producing pleasingly juvenile cartoons, while Omnipollo, an award-winning Stockholm brewery, works predominantly with artist Karl Grandin, whose bottles are gorgeous: sparse with minimal text and dozens of mouth-watering labels covering beers made in collaboration with brewers across the globe.  

It’s true: treating a beer label as a canvas feels like a treat; something that isn’t expected but a surprise. It calls to mind Art Everywhere – the innovative project that erupts across billboards and bus shelters every summer, taking famous and much-loved artworks out of the galleries and into the streets. It’s art for art's sake, and why shouldn’t that same philosophy be extended to the beer labels we examine, peel and eagerly wrap our hands around when we’re at the pub? 

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/food-and-drink