I love looking at cool beer labels just as much as I love drinking the stuff inside. "Cool" being the operative word - one person's cool is another person's meh - just like the taste. If it looks cool to me it will catch my attention; I get distracted with my eyes first, then I read the labels to try to decipher if I'll like it or not. It's a 50/50 gamble. Sometimes I'll love it, and sometimes I'll be left thinking, "Mannnn, I just spent £2.50 on that pap?!". That's all a part of the fun for me.
Cool Beer Labels: The Best Art + Design from Breweries Around the World by Daniel Bellon + Steven Speeg landed on my coffee table last Christmas, and it's been regularly thumbed ever since. It's packed full of interestingly designed labels, graphic design tales, branding projects, notes on what they think makes a great, eye-catching design and back stories on brewers from across the world.
The prelude by Daniel Bellon is a pretty funny one too. He shares his first encounter with beer as a teenager, why his "All American" father was so obsessed with imports, how he hated the taste for years but fell in love with Belgian beers when he was touring with his band in Europe, why it doesn't need to be looked at as a pretentious "hobby", and what makes for a memorable design.
Simply put, it's a wonderfully visual book by two people with backgrounds in graphic design, who have crazy-levels passion for beer + packaging.
Further resources - A blog dedicated to beer bottle design, Oh Beautiful Beer. For affordable help with graphic design + branding, 99designs.co.uk. Cool Beer Labels is available in the UK here, and US here.
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