Beer labels match brewed contents to Pantone color

[Permalink]

Neat idea that was thoroughly ruined by the font used on the bottles.

6 Likes

I just assumed the screwed up font was entirely a watermarking choice.

I can see a slight problem with the bottles. They’d likely have to wrapped or aluminium to be colored that way. Otherwise they’d likely be prohibitively expensive or otherwise impractical.

I also think there is a bigger conceptual problem. The natural assumption would be the color of the package matches the color of the product or provides some info about the flavor of the product. But beer color isn’t a reliable indicator of flavor, it can tell you a bit, but there’s a lot more going on there. And color divisions aren’t that clear with beer. For one there really isn’t a technical difference between porter and stout, and certainly not in the color. In fact stout, porter, and imperial stout are all usually the color used for the imperial stout hear. And they don’t exist on any sort of fixed continuum in relation to each other. Not for flavor, color, alcohol content etc. Like wise there are pale ales that are darker than some Brown ales and they in turn can be darker than dark ales. Wheat beers can exist anywhere along the color spectrum, though we’re most familiar with very pale or white ones . Which isn’t the color they use here.

I think the whole idea sort of falls apart when you try to apply it to any actual beer .

2 Likes

It’s probably just my monitor, but the pale ale is rendering with more than a hint of green.

1 Like

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

The beer is REALLY cold. And it is very warm and humid.

2 Likes

You’ve hit the real problem with these bottles. They’re not informative at all, and if they’re aimed at anyone it seems like they’re aimed at the very general beer drinker–that is, a drinker who’s not likely to drink anything other than a standard lager.

Granted not even the most elaborate labels tell you much about the beer inside–my favorite labels are the ones designed by Ralph Steadman for Flying Dog Ales. But at least the creative labels and names suggest that they’ve put some thought into the beer as well as the packaging an assumption that’s rewarded by tasting.

I took a while to figure out it wasn’t just weird unfortunate droplet placement refracting things around. Weird typographic choice.

Clearly not a design student. When have these cool ‘concepts’ ever been burdened by feasibility or logic? You’ve just (probably) though harder about the underlying difficulties than the creator ever did.

2 Likes

Interesting that they are using pantone coated numbers - but why not metallic pantone if it is going on a metallic surface.

1 Like

I just wasted 90 seconds looking up WTF “Pantone” is. Is this something I should have just know? LIke Seinfeld references?

Subliminal marketing.
http://www.greenflashbrew.com/

I still read it every time as pant-won.

It’s specialized knowledge, but really, really widely-known specialized knowledge - as in: if you’ve ever taken an art class after high school, used a design program more advanced than MS Publisher, or ever needed to have something professionally printed, you will have been exposed to the term (and I’m not even talking about the people who use the term every day in their jobs). That probably takes in 95% of the visitors to this blog… so, yes: you probably should know it.

2 Likes

I like it- quick, clever, clean… and it’s getting attention.

Wait till you see it on the way out.

2 Likes

I think the typeface is awesome. It sacrifices utility for artistic integrity

4 Likes

StoutÂŽ?
Pale AleÂŽ?

Since when can you register historically generic terms for beverages?

If you put the word in all caps in a weird typeface like that, then you could probably make the word STOUT in that particular typeface a registered trademark. I doubt anybody else would want to use that typeface for a stout, but if they did you could stop them.

Certainly the combination of the label layout, color, and typeface, would be registrable as a trademark.

P.S. IAMNOTALAWYER.