This playful, hand-drawn world is one of dozens that label artist Colin has created for Prairie Artisan Ales, a young Oklahoman brewery with a prolific and highly acclaimed lineup.
When Lindsay and Andrew Nations were building the look of their Shreveport, La., brewery, Great Raft, they didn’t have to look much further than the art hanging on their own walls for inspiration: the hand-drawn, lithographic style in the music posters created by Tennessee artist Justin Helton.
The hand-drawn diagram of a futuristic weapon may look inconsequential at first. But it all goes back to Backpocket brewer Jacob Simmons’ PhD in microbiology. Each Lab Series label offers a glimpse into the brewery’s beer lab with each recipe printed right on the label.
Together with brewery owners Kristen and Jeremy Kozik, designer Josh Emrich did research in the public library to find imagery from the Aztec and Mayan cultures, the inspiration for this beer.
Church of The Atom is a nanobrewery in Sweden’s beer hub of Gothenburg that derives its name from a post-apocalyptic video game that co-founders Kristian Hallberg and Marcus Ekdahl were both into when they decided to launch CoTA.
When Utah-based Epic Brewing signed a lease on a warehouse in Denver’s River North arts district, they were eager to integrate themselves into the community. Which is why David Cole, co-founder of Epic, went on the hunt for the artist behind the landmark mural a block from their new brewery.
Spiteful, a small brewery in Chicago, is run by a couple of really nice guys who really hate certain things. Among the triggers of their wrath have been trouble-making pigeons, a guy named Colin and texting pedestrians.
Chris Ray and his brother Phil parted ways with their former careers and opened Center of the Universe in November 2012. Knowing that a beer means more to consumers if it comes with a great story, they wanted to put theirs right on the can: Chris was a Major League Baseball pitcher and Phil was a NASA engineer.
At London’s Partizan Brewing, each label starts with the same idea—characters and objects shaping letters that spell the name of the beer, a technique that’s been part of artist Alec Doherty’s work for a while.
The anthropomorphic terrapins on Terrapin’s labels aren’t a rip-off of Grateful Dead imagery; artist Richard Biffle actually designed album covers and merch for the Grateful Dead, the Dead, Jeff Beck, Santana and The Black Crowes, among others.
The can design for Midnight Ryeder has garnered a great deal of attention since it was released in October 2012. Did someone hack into Teddy Roosevelt’s private self-portrait collection? Did Yellowstone Park plan on hosting a Steampunk festival that never got off the ground?
Christian Helms and Jakob McKean started with 14 different concepts for the can design, inspired by vintage packaging McKean had collected. Then they brought in typographer Simon Walker to create the logotype. What they ended up with was simple, yet striking.
When Florida’s Cigar City Brewing and Michigan’s B. Nektar Meadery decided to brew a s’mores-inspired Braggot, the label concept was quick to follow. The bears represent the ingredients in a loose sense—bears love honey, and they’re roasting marshmallows.
On No-Li’s labels, the sleek layout is the framework, but the illustration is the heart of the design: highly figurative, graphic images that convey a message about what the beer represents.
Chef Justin White and owner Phil McFarland of Small Bar in Chicago collaborated with Michigan’s Greenbush Brewing Co. on Mr. Hyde, a Cream Stout made with Sumatran coffee beans.
Tim Leanse and Sam Rowell, of Noble Union Imports, are combining their multifarious jobs to create Alchemic Ale, a series that pairs beers with original artwork. Each beer in the series is released in earthenware, 750-millileter bottles screenprinted with an artist’s work.
All of Gigantic’s labels are designed to look like the cover of a comic book, including the surreal, tripped out image created for The City Never Sleeps by children’s book author J. Otto Seibold.
The guys at DC Brau aren’t afraid to creep people out. So when it came time to conceptualize their next beer, the dark side was the first place they went.
The mythological art on Pipeworks’ Glaucus Belgian-style IPA can be traced back to a cartography exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Artist Adam Forman created the spooky imagery that’s been part of the brewery’s identity since it opened in 2004—from their toothy jack-o’-lantern logo to creepy scarecrows and pumpkin-patch graveyards.
The new Merry Monks label is part of a major overhaul of Weyerbacher’s branding and the scene captures the mischief that in part defines Weyerbacher as a brand.
The label art for a new beer from Massachusetts-based Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project dips into the part-fictional, part-real life world Dann and Martha Paquette are constructing.
