Cool Beer Labels: The Best Art & Design from Breweries Around the World
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About this ebook
The days of boring, mass-produced yellow fizz-water are all but over. These days, independent beer makers are creating a wide variety of interesting beers that exhibit a vast range of depth and flavor. Beer is more than a beverage--it's an artisan craft championed by talented people devoted to quality and good taste. And as craft beer and home brewing continue to grow by leaps and bounds, the culture of beer has made the shift from big business to an industry filled with people who truly care about what they make. And that attention to detail goes for the art and packaging as well as the brews themselves.
Cool Beer Labels explores the art and design of beer culture from labels to cans to growlers and more. Inside you'll find:
- More than 400 full color examples of beer labels from craft and small breweries around the world
- Case studies from working designers
- Interviews with brewery owners and master brewers
- An exploration of breweries by region
- And more
Daniel Bellon
Daniel Bellon is the author of Cool Beer Labels and Typography for the People.
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Cool Beer Labels - Daniel Bellon
Foreword
by Greg Koch, CEO & Co-founder, Stone Brewing Co.
I love beer. No, not like your buddy who polishes off a 24-pack every weekend. That’s a love of drinking. I mean I love beer. Real beer. And not just the beer itself… I’m passionate about the idea of beer. Great beer represents a vast number of things—passion, artistry, authenticity, creativity and honesty. It’s all of this that fuels my fanaticism.
I’m known for sometimes talking in terms evocative of a revolutionary who’s joined the collective call for Freedom!
and there’s a reason for that: I’ve joined the collective call for freedom of access to great beer. In fact, many consider me a zealot. It was my zealotry that led me to start Stone Brewing Co. with my business partner (and more importantly, our brewmaster), Steve Wagner, in 1996.
In the years prior, I’d become fascinated by the art, integrity and inventiveness of small brewers. However, my journey down the rabbit hole of great beer actually took several years. Such was the reality of living in Los Angeles in the craft-beer-starved, pre-Internet days of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, the call to action for better, higher quality beer came from only a small group, but it was a fierce and ardent assemblage. I heard that call, and it resonated with me. Yes, principally because I realized that the words awesome
and beer
could actually coexist in the same sentence, but also in part because of my discovery that I’d been lied to when told that all that industrial, fizzy, yellow stuff was beer.
Now I knew better. I was in.
Since then, a lot has changed. The quantity and availability of quality ales and lagers has greatly increased. In today’s world, I feel there is no excuse for a bar, restaurant or hotel not to make great choices available to me as a customer. With so much craft beer being produced, and such an undeniable demand for it, it’s more of a conscious choice for public venues not to participate, and if an establishment makes that decision, then I’m going to make the same one—I’m going elsewhere. I simply will not tolerate anyone offering me mediocrity when excellence is so frequently available. Period.
While many people still think of beer as the industrialized facsimile stuff, that’s not beer. At least not to me. Nor should it be to anyone else. While we once had to settle, as a nation, we have broken free from the chains of low expectations, from the insulting insinuation by large corporations that we don’t want or deserve better. At Stone, our focus has always been on providing something better, and we are proud to be part of an industry that shares that altruistic objective.
Nothing represents this new age in beer or the true passion and artistry of this industry like the beer label. Ironically, nothing represents the dark side better, either. Fortunately, this book focuses on the former. But allow me to digress, all the same. After all, having whetted your appetite for scandal, I’m sure you want to know my thoughts on the latter.
I’m not going to name names, but I will call out the dark side of the beer label: Lies. I’m one to draw hard lines. I see little difference between a company knowingly allowing the public to believe something that’s not true, often designing packaging and slogans that are specifically aimed at that goal… and a company based on outright mistruths. All are intended to allow us to believe something that’s not true.
Case in point: a label that suggests a beer is made somewhere it’s not. Or by a company it’s not. Or on an island it’s not. Or in an area code where it’s not. By a small, independent company, when it’s not. By a small brewery that doesn’t actually exist except on a paper label. That’s horseshit! I believe the truth should be easy to understand and require no special knowledge to flush out.
Of course, those negatives, funnily enough, highlight what’s great about beer labels, too. They can be pieces of art that convey far more than technical information. They are capable of conveying style, often a sense of place, an attitude, or a philosophy. I know beer labels that are nods to comic art, to death metal music and to mythology. And that’s just from one brewery!
When it came time to create the labels for Stone, it was a laborious process. Looking back, the choices seem obvious, but at the time, it was painful. The main challenge was finding the right artist to help me create my vision. A big part of it was that I wasn’t 100% sure just what that vision was. Minor detail. I had a variety of artists, all extremely talented, submit ideas that were so far off the mark I’d wonder if they’d heard a single word I’d said. Finally, after seeing some fantastic fantasy art at a local t-shirt screen printing shop, I asked for the name of the artist. Fortuitously, it was a local guy named Tom Matthews, and I was able to get his contact info.
Stone Brewing Co.
Escondido, California
StoneBrewing.com
Design by Stone Brewing Co.
Tom was intrigued with the idea of creating an iconic gargoyle figure that would convey the weightiness of a time-worn