Craft Beer Label Design topic on Scoop.it!

This isn't the first blog focusing on design and packaging of the global craft beer scene. Oh Beautiful Beer! has been sharing eye-catching beer packaging from around the world since 2011. I recently stumbled upon another blog, Beers Illustrated, creating for the Australian craft beer scene what I would like to do in South African one.

Instead of writing a post summarising every article that has been published on the label artwork of local breweries, I decided to create a Scoop.it! topic. The topic isn't limited to South African beer labels either, as I have included several articles and interviews that I come across featuring prominent designers and brewers from the US. I will continue to curate and add to the Craft Beer Label Design topic as I continue my research and find more content.

Behind the scenes at the 2018 Beer Label Design Awards

Jacqueline Lahoud shared a photograph earlier today showing the judging process of the first annual Beer Label Design Awards.

Image from Twitter.

Several of the beer labels are easily recognisable, but a few are a little more tricky to identify. Here's  a list of the breweries that I've managed to identify so far (clockwise from left);

• Poison City Brewing, Durban (3 bottles)
• Mitchell's Brewing, Knysna (6 bottles)
• Little Wolf Brewery, Cape Town (5 bottles)
• Long Beach Brewery, Cape Town (4 bottles)
• Unknown (1 bottles)
• Unknown (2? bottles) Red Sky Brew (?), Gordon's Bay
• Red Bridge Brewing Co., Knysna (3 bottles)

I'll update the list of entries/finalists as more information becomes available.

-- Update --

A second photograph showing the judges at work was uploaded.

Image from Twitter

From this image we can clearly see that there are a lot more entries than shown in the first image, which is a great relief, but many of them are not easily identifiable. These are what I've managed to identify in addition to the list above;

• Red Sky Brew, Gordon's Bay - one of the "unknowns" from above. Not 100% sure about the identification, but the logo on the box looks to be that of Red Sky.
• The green, yellow, blue and red crowns could represent four beers from the Drifter Brewing Company range. Again not 100% certain, but they are the only local brewery that I can think of at the moment that uses different coloured crown caps.
• The RedRock Brewing Company, Johannesburg - the box on the top right.

On the counter from left to right;

• Darling Brew, Darling - distinctive yellow and black label of Slow Beer on 'Belgian-styled' 330 ml bottle.
• Mountain Brewing Company, Worcester - colour and label shape match that of the seasonal release Cherry Stumpie.
• 3x unknowns - look to be extra bottles from Poison City Brewing
• 1x unknown - looks to be another bottle belonging to Red Sky Brew
• 2x unknowns
• Soweto Brewing Company, Soweto - the 750 ml bottles are quite distinctive in shape.
• 1x unknwon
• Stellenbosch Brewing Co., Stellenbosch - labels shape and colours match a bottle from the core range and a bottle of Mass Hoppiness.
• Striped Horse - distinctive white, red and black bands of a Striped Horse Craft Lager label.
• Possibly some unknowns, but more likely some extra bottles from RedRock.

Excluding all the unknowns, I've managed to come up with 13 possible breweries to have entered the competition. That's not bad going for the first year the competition is being held, but at the same time a little disappointing as there are a lot of great labels that I didn't see laid out on the judges tables, particularly from outside of the Western Cape.

New Name. Same Project

I started reaching out to a few breweries and design agencies/studios last month. So far all of the designers I've contacted have shown a willingness to contribute to the project, but I've had very few responses from the breweries. There are also a lot of labels that I would like to include from breweries that have already ceased operations, and getting in contact with them has been a challenge.

It's for these reasons that I've decided to change the focus of the project slightly. Instead of only being able to share stories about a select few of the established microbreweries that have been around long enough to have undergone significant branding changes, to focusing more on the actual beer labels themselves and the designers behind their creation. This will allow the incredible designs from those smaller and newer microbreweries, as well as those that have stopped production to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the labels from the well-known, big craft beer brands found in the liquor section of every major supermarket chain in South Africa. 

The revolution may be dead, but like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the South African Beer Label Project will persevere. Maybe some of the (r)evolution of craft stories that I'd started writing will be able to find a place somewhere in the new project, but for now the evolution stories have been shelved.