Inaugural Beer Label Design Awards

This year sees Winemag.co.za hosting the inaugural Beer Label Design Awards (BLDA) in conjunction with the fourth annual Wine Label Design Awards, both sponsored by Rotolabel. Winners of last years Wine Label Design Awards may be viewed here.

According to the entry kit, the rationale behind the BLDA is to reward outstanding designs as an influence on beer purchases. Judging criteria will include originality and execution of concept, shelf appeal, as well effectiveness as a piece of communication. Entries will be split into two categories; 1) single labels and 2) labels forming a series.

Beers entered must be produced in South Africa and be commercially available. Entries close on 15 February 2018, and must include a 150 word creative brief.

Welcome to the revolution!

I've been wanting to write a book focusing on the development of South African craft beer branding for quite some time. The problem is that I just haven't made the time to do it. Then it occurred to me to break up the project into a series of standalone articles/chapters that could potentially be compiled into a book at a later stage. 

So what you'll find here will (hopefully) be 'preprint' versions of these single pieces in the form of a series of blog posts, likely intermingled with some other news from the South African craft beer scene.

I intend to reach out to several of the brewers and breweries behind the South African craft beer revolution and discuss how their physical breweries, as well as the brewery's branding have evolved in the years since their establishment. Essentially what I want to disseminate are the stories behind the "evolution of the revolution." Hence the brackets in the blog's title.