Journal Entry 9: Beer labels

I have been called a connoisseur of beer on a number of occasions. I don't like to drink a lot, so when I do drink, I drink good beer. I've found labels on some beer (especially microbrews) are really cool and unique. For a while I aspired to be a designer at a brewery, I've given up that dream for something a little broader. Anyway, how does one come up with the concept for a label? It's not like a cd where the music has a certain style, and a certain style of art will fit with that. For example, putting pictures of violins and cellos on a Sublime cover doesn't make sense. In the end, I don't think there is a right answer to this question. I guess you take the brewers brand identity into consideration, the kind of beer (a hoppy beer like an IPA may have hops on the label, while a hefeweizen may have wheat), add that to the name that was chosen for the beer and then mix that all together. I am going to examine three different beer labels, too keep this post more focused I am going to focus on India Pale Ales (IPAs). The first IPA I am going to look at is a new offering from New Belgium Brewing Co. called Ranger, the second will be Stone IPA, and the third is Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA.

The first IPA is from the largest of the three breweries, and it is also the newest. New Belgium's Ranger IPA is part of their "Explore Series." I really don't know much about this, and the website does not say much. What I can tell you is that the label design for the Explore Series(and the Lips of Faith series) is vastly different from all of New Belgium's other offerings. Besides the New Belgium logo it is entirely different. Most of their designs feature an ornate picture that looks like an oil painting with the same serif typeface. They are very nice designs and create a unified brand identity, but they have become mundane. To someone who knows and likes the brand they are probably comforting, but they most likely won't catch the eye of someone who is not familiar with the brand. On the other hand, Ranger has a very simple bold design. Two colors (excluding the label) and a strong sans serif typeface really make this stand out. Definitely a good way to mix things up for a 30 year old brand.

The next label I will be looking at, is that of Stone IPA. Stone Brewing Co. also has a very cohesive brand identity. With many of their beers the structure of the label is very similar. The only thing on the label that changes is the colored lines and boxes, and of course the information. This may sound like it would make it hard to tell the difference between their beers, but due to how simple and bold they are it is fairly easy. I personally prefer sans serif fonts for pretty much everything but body copy, but Stones use of a serif font works well and is quite sensible. They have a very strong gargoyle motif which is reminiscent of the medieval ages, when all they had to work with were serif fonts. I especially like the large font they use for the word Stone. I don't remember what the right term for it is, but the way that the letters have a partial fill, and look embossed adds to the gargoyle-ish, medieval motif. The one beef I have with their packaging is with the text on the neck of the bottle. The font falls somewhere between a clean sans serif like Helvetica and a cheesy handwritten font like comic sans. This is the only bottle they do it on, and every time I see it, a little piece of me dies inside.

The final beverage label I will be discussing is Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA. You know with a name like Dogfish Head the design is bound to be quirky, and it definitely is. I wanted to find a picture with a layout similar to the others, but due to how small many of the elements on this bottle are, I chose to use this one. Dogfish Head is the smallest of these three breweries, and unfortunately I think it shows in their design. I'm not saying the design is inherently bad, and they definitely have a solid brand identity... But I still feel like something is left to be desired. The font used for their name has a very thin stroke, I believe it is Courier Regular or something. Not the best choice for a headline, when the logo is large it works well, but at smaller sizes it is hard to decipher. Also there isn't enough contrast between the background and the text. The pastel palette is nice, but bumping up the contrast would be a good call. This is especially true for the beginning of the description where it says "What you have here." A pink font on an orange background is tough to read, also they print on something akin to newsprint so the letters aren't as sharp as they could be. Having the description in two sizes, with different leading, and colors is somewhat confusing. I feel like the first part should be a sub head and the other stuff should be body copy. Oh my, I may have gotten carried away on that. I will give Dogfish Head this, what they lack in design, they make up for in good beer. And that is what drinking beer is all about, not overanalyzing labels like I started doing after my first few years of design classes. Also, they do have a pretty decent website.