5 Label Designs
For a wedding gift to Lauren & Doug, David and I designed and framed a label/poster for the Matrimony Ale. We kept with the theme and font they used in the invitation. After playing around with an initial design, utilizing a fabric pinstripe from the invitation, David finally came up with something quite good. I like finding old frames from thrift stores to put art and beer labels into. So when I found this simple wooden frame, I knew it would be perfect. We even utilized the border from the picture that was in the frame for matting. Here is an image file and photo of Lauren holding the actual piece.
Recently, I design my own label for the Simcoe 100 Amber Ale. I did it in a Word document. And then Sarah helped me get it into a GIF form. It's a simple concept, and something to work off of. I like oval shapes for labels.
In order to write this post, I asked David if he kept the designs for a few ales made a couple years ago. He actually found one that goes way back to 2002. A beer that was supposedly called Old Amber Ale. I have a feeling this was what I referred to as "Fermented Water" in an past post . It's too bad such a great label was made for such a sissy beer. Maybe we can use this label design for the Ancient Ale/Old Ale, or for a Scottish Ale in the future.
For our first all-grain batch, and in honer of Nomeansno/John Wright, we brewed Johnny's Rockin' Ale. We simply made a dog-tag for this one. I love it's textured lettering, and simple looks.
For a x-mas gift in 2005, we brewed up a bold beer called Holiday Spiced Ale. I was in charge of building the malt profile that would be strong and sweet to balance the assertive spiciness we were going for. I also chose hops that lean towards spiciness. Since he was becoming well versed with various spices while making home-made chai teas, David was in charge of building up a spice blend. In the end the gravity made it into the 60's and 2
baseball sized tea-infusers were packed with freshly diced ginger and a long list of spices. To my surprise, my parents still have their bottle sitting in the frig...see photo. I'm very happy they didn't drink it, cause I think it will definitely mellow even more and be simply amazing in another year or two. Maybe I can coax them into giving me that bottle for X-mas this year. It was a great beer. The label design for this one was a ribbon collar with an oval paper label glued at the crossing point.
Thanks for taking a look at my beer labels. Can you tell, David is a professional graphic designer. I really appreciate all the effort he put into them. And I had a great time helping out with ideas. Don't they look fantastic?
