The rise of craft beer is unlikely to stop any time soon. And small, exciting breweries have evolved in terms of beer, big business and technology; for example, automated canning lines are now more accessible to small-scale producers. The visual identities of these breweries have also started evolving.
As they have become slicker, with more money spent on design, the beer market has become tough and fiercely competitive. Craft beers have kept their sense of humour with bright and funny illustrations – which is what initially set them apart. Some don’t even say what brewery or beer you are looking at – they rely on their visual language to entice you to buy.
The artwork is no longer limited to a label on a bottle either: in many cases it wraps the whole can. While the canvas is still not huge, it now means designers can be more experimental. Even the big breweries (and supermarket own brands) have their own ‘craft beers’, which look suspiciously similar to the bold and brash illustrations found on the cans of trailblazer brewers.
Craft breweries start small, and with that comes favours from friends. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been asked to design labels when friends decide they are going to be the next BrewDog (the Scottish craft brewery that in just a decade grew from two guys selling hand-filled beer bottles out of a van to a global producer with 1000 employees, bars and even a hotel. Some of the world’s most exciting beer makers have a similar story).
The three collaborations in the following pages demonstrate much more than the usual client-illustrator relationship. These illustrators have played a vital part in the success of each brewery, and they also set a visual standard for the craft beer scene as a whole.