Are you influenced by label design?

As someone who works in art/design, I will say that package design plays a far bigger role than most people want to admit. There's a reason design is such an enormous industry. I do appreciate outstanding label designs and have for sure bought beers based on labels. For example, I'm not the hugest fan of sours, but when I saw the bottles for the new Almanac Grand Cru bottles this year (and last year), I immediately wanted those beauties for display on my shelf of slain whales!

 

I have one of those.

Cheers!

 

This can work both ways. I was recently at my local bottle shop talking with the new beer guru. He was looking at the list of beers that are supposed to be on shelves and says "did you know we have jw lees harvest ale... from 2006?". I have been in this shop at least, AT LEAST, once a week for the last five or six years and have never seen the beer on the shelf. Sure as shit he walks back and there they were. Its such a blah label I never paid it any attention.

 

Of course to a degree, they spent a lot of money on marketing strategies to prove that. Look at the wine labels, there's 1000 Red Zins pick one out of 60 that's on the shelf. The crazy labels are sometime a tie breaker as much as price. If you like Red Zins try Oak Ridge btw, great wine, great price. Probably get deleted as banter.

 

It's not a deal breaker for me, but I definitely notice it. The Brown Note would have to be a pretty amazing beer for me to purchase it. No thanks.

Format and price are more of a deal breaker....looking at you Maine Beer and Singlecut!

 

Only important things for me on the label of a beer I am not familiar with: A good description of the beer, ABV, bottle date. If any of these are missing I don't buy.

 

Ha! Ok, it stands for the daily What Beer Are You Drinking Now thread. If you hang out there often enough you'll start to build a mental list of beers you want to try if you ever run across them. As a recent example, I came across some Half Acre Gone Away IPA recently and recognized the can from quite a few positive posts on that thread, so I grabbed a 4-pack. Turned out to be a pretty good move, and now I have another solid beer added to the rotation.

 

If it looks like something I might like I'll pick it up to read the bottling code and if it doesn't have one or is out of date I put it back no matter who made it.

 

Yes.

 

Absolutely right, they made you take a look, you read and put it back. You keep looking, you've find a tie breaker you grab the cool bottle. Doesn't happen all the time, but if it happens enough and the beer is good it moves faster. I love Pseudu Sue, great beer, but there's others equal, but that big cool bottle with the holograph Dino was cool. But the beers good so it took off, if it was crap you'd keep the bottle and never buy it again. With that cool bottle comes some responsibility...

 

Absolutely (even though I know I shouldn't). I'm a total sucker for a good label (or an extremely ugly one as it ends up being equally intriguing).

I mean, how can you resist these:

 

I noticed the VooDoo Ranger beers because the label is so cool. I am not an IPA fan so I tried their lower IBU 8 Hop Pale Ale, and it is pretty decent, a bit fruity. I have it from a good source that there will be a VooDoo Ranger t-shirt available.

They should follow it up with a Strange Ranger series.

 

I don't buy a beer solely based on label art, but really good label art is a bonus...Like breweries such as Three Floyds, Shorts for example tend to have great labels....and beer names....But whats in the bottle is the most important thing....

 

When I first got into craft beer, I bought things solely based on the label. Now, I consider myself pretty aware of my biases and weakness, and I quickly figured out that what might look pretty, may not taste even half way decent. That's about the time I started browsing BA to check beer ratings and reviews. Still, after all this time, I still find myself picking up bottles based on artwork. For example, I'm not a big fan of Jolly Pumpkin's artwork. There is another brewery with similar artwork. The bottle shop I stopped at today has a half a shelf totally stocked with their bombers, and yet I've never even read them because they don't look appealing. Meanwhile, I grab just about any Mikkeller or Evil Twin beer I can because of their logos. Same goes for Prairie. I even grabbed my favorite RIS aged in Rum based on the label.

Overall, I would say I'm better about picking and choosing, but the label is still a factor. I just know a lot more about breweries and styles I want to or maybe not to try that influence my decision compared with when I started.

 

I was going to say NO, labels don't influence me, but after thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that they actually do to some degree.
When I see labels sporting cartoony looking designs or stupid sounding, gimmicky names, I will usually steer clear. From past experience, I've come to realize that beers labeled thusly are often (and with probably only a few exceptions) the ones that taste the most amateurish in execution ...a trait which is increasingly a problem with (and unfortunately a common trait of) many so called 'craft' beers in recent years.

 

Yes. When I see label designs that objectify women, I don't buy them.

(Sadly, brewers' creativity does not seem to extend to naming their blonde ales.)

 

WBAYDN is the most important thread to know if you're new to the site. Ive learned about so many beers there and, I agree w/ @TongoRad you recognize labels from seeing them on that thread.

Also, I agree- Lagunitas labels are a tad bland, if not they all look too similar to quickly distinguish. As such, I dont tend to buy them as much as other breweries.

Good topic for discussion. Thanks for posting!

 

I must admit, when being in a "strange land" where I don't know the locals, or when specifically looking for something new, labels grab my attention.

Then there's a quick check of BA (to some bottle shop owners' perturbance).

Won't buy a bottle if the reviews don't entice me, but might not check a beer with more boring packaging if I don't recognize the brewery (i.e. Maine Brewing I knew of).

There's so much out there now, i can't know or check everything. The info from my marketing classes are bubbling up from the many years ago when I learned them. Seems that they aren't out of date .

 

They do for me. If I can't find a new Stout or Porter I'll just snag what ever label looks good to my eyes.