The Art of Craft Beer
Nick Dwyer working on a design for their new apple brew, Applelation.
Beavertown’s artwork is famous in craft beer circles. Sci-fi lovers and geeks at heart, both Logan Plant ,owner, and Nick Dwyer, in house artist, gravitate towards designs around laser beams and space ships. Like a two headed beer monster they work in unison to produce a gargantuan 101,000 cans of beer every month. Logan attributes their success in part to the artwork as it is an integral part of the product as a whole.
“It’s more than a bottle of beer, it’s about that art form. Picking it up, looking into it. Who’s the artist? What’s inside? There’s just more depth straight from the off.”
Nick studied at Central St Martins graduating in 2012 and Logan employed him soon after.
“We did five designs in the space of about three months, that’s about a year’s worth of work. He can be a nightmare to work with because he says things like, ‘Make it pop’.” Nick says jokingly.
He describes his job as “beavering up” everything. From t-shirts to beer launches the design is all handled by Nick and as an artist, it’s a great position to be in. He has the freedom to make art and is getting huge exposure.
5th Colour screen printer cleans a Beavertown screen to be used to print t-shirts later that day.
“The craft brewing industry is a really friendly place to be working as a brewer and as an artist. There’s not really a hugely competitive element, its more about stimulating each other.”
The experimental nature of brewing goes hand in hand with the designs which are loud, in your face, busy and bright. Nick put two Gamma Ray’s next to each other, one of the beers he named. The first depicts spacemen with ray guns on a red mars like planet, the second the same exact image only the spacemen’s faces seem to have rotted away to skeletons. This, Nick explains, was intentionally to keep the Portman group from coming after them. Arguments about it being too child friendly have begun.
“It’s very frustrating because the artwork is very considered and it’s supposed to appeal to people of our age. It’s very important to us as a piece of branding.”
Nick’s style of drawing read like a map to who his heroes are, these influences mix with the weird and wacky ideas that pop into his head. He explains what makes his art pop,
“Ralph Steadman, lots of comic book artists and graphic novel artists. I also watch things like Mars Attack. A lot of stuff that isn’t even artwork, just theories and ideas. I get into silly science fiction things and space facts.”
The beer has all the American lustre in taste, design and scale; they now export internationally. Partizan Brewing, although colourful and creative, haven’t had to deal with Portman Group complaints. Perhaps because they operate happily on a smaller scale producing 5,500 bottles of beer per week. When I arrive at Alec Doherty’s studio he’s just finished the 200th label for the 200th brew for Partizan.
Alec Doherty sketching the design for Partizan's label to go on their next brew called 'The Huff'.
“It’s my favourite job for sure, I can do what I want whereas other jobs a lot of the time you have to conform to what the client wants so it’s nice to do the Partizan stuff.”
Partizan’s leader Andy Smith gives Alec a lot of freedom, this is one of the things both Nick and Alec enjoy most about their job.
Back in 2004, Alec was studying graphic art at Leeds Met and beer was just beer. Alec had dreams of designing record label sleeves but Andy would change all that. Andy introduced Alec to beer and Alec introduced Andy to art but Alec has found, it’s fulfilled his desire to make something just as cool as an album sleeve,
“It’s like music, you can think ‘oh, there’s only so many chords’, so how can you make such a variety of music but people keep doing it and keep doing it. It’s whatever you can bring to it.”
Partizan have garnered a reputation for making reference to key events and to the people who make up the craft beer community in their artwork.
“I’ll ask the guys at the brewery ‘give me some stuff to get inspiration from’ so it might be, ‘ohh we mashed in to Joy Division so there’ll be a Joy Division reference in there or they’ve recently got Edina the brewery cat so she features a lot.”
Although micro in scale Partizan have a religious following, people go down to the brewery to get the new beer and see the new label each week.
“It’s great for them to look at the bottle and see someone they know or something that’s been in the news.”
Alec arranges some of the equiptment he uses to produce the artwork that go into Partizan's labels.
Alec shows me their next creation, ‘The Huff”. It’s the kind of beer boys used to brew at Cambridge university and it’s incredibly strong. Alec has drawn a ‘toff’ lounging on a canal boat in characteristic primary colours.
Like Nick, the first stage of the label design is sketching, then it’s scanned into a computer and colourised. Partizan haven’t launched into merchandise on the same scale as Beavetown but you can buy Alec’s prints online or at the brewery if you give Andy enough notice. This has helped profile him as an artist.
“It’s a nice legacy, when you look through the archive. It’s like a visual diary.”
The key to success here Alec believes is simply both sides enjoying what they do, Andy loves beer brewing and he loves making the labels.
“There’s no brand or anything like that, it’s all free and easy. I think its nice being quite small as long as you are getting enough to have a few beers and have your dinner your alright.”
Anspach and Hobday down on the Bermondsey Mile take a different approach to both Beavertown and Partizan. Their beer labels won design awards at the international beer challenge in 2013. Unsurprising when you find out that they have Kastner and Partners (K&P) behind them who market Red Bull.
Dan Smith, Head of Design, and Alan Bately, artist, showcase their beer labels in the London offices for Kastner & Partners
K&P found Paul Anspach and Jack Hobday’s brewery through their successful Kickstarter campaign in April 2013. Neil Cook, Creative Managing Director K&P, explained how it all began,
“At the time they were deliberately looking for a start up brewer or a small brewer. We’re an agency full of guys, loving beer and loving the craft beer thing.”
They scouted round breweries but found many were suspicious of a branding agency as powerful as K&P, after all. These guys do the marketing for Red Bull. Neil explains the kind of breweries they found and these similarities do ring true,
“It struck me that those guys were building lifestyle businesses. It was for two people and as long as they were paying their own wages and covering their costs they were happy. The difference with Paul and Jack was that they had real ambition and real vision.”
A&H have visions of owning a cathedral to beer in the city centre. So when did the artwork begin? Alan Batley got involved quite a few steps down the line. The style of illustration was up for debate. Ultimately we went for woodcut and Alan is the King of the woodcut. Alan explained the design process,
“The brief was that there would always be two characters and that they would be based on Jack and Paul. They wanted the Victorian element to it with a modern parody version of that element but to be done in a woodcut style.”
Alan Bately origional pencil skeches next to the finished product, Anspach and Hobday's IPA is a firm favourite at the K&P office.
The woodcut style is meant to reflect the way the boys brew, using old, trusted brewing techniques for the modern drinker. They recognise people want hand made, hand crafted and that why they got Alan Batley involved.
The humour is very apparent in the Anspach and Hobday labels, their more so in the modern day parody of his Victorian counterpart. It was Neil’s idea to have one old one new bloke on the front of the label. Drilling home their tag line which is “conceived in the 19th century, refined for the 21st”.
The time it takes to make a label varies, first Alan will draw five or six sketches of each character, send them to K&P, they filter and check with Jack and Paul. Once a character is picked it goes back to Alan who will tweak it and do a finished pencil sketch about 15cm long. One label idea will go through as many as six of them. The end product is a highly considered piece of art. Next on the cards for Anspach and Hobday is a Pale Ale, the visual concept for this one came straight from Jack and Paul themselves.
Paul Anspach “The next beer to come out in bottle will be the pale ale 4.4%. Cricketers just seemed to make sense. It’s always fun coming up with the character ideas and that one just seemed obvious.”
Paul tells me how in craft beer, branding is everything.
“In the craft beer genre as it were it’s almost anti brand. If you’re seeing to be putting too much attention into your brand the assumption is that you’re not putting attention into your product and I think it’s just an attention to detail thing.”
So what does the future hold for craft beer?
“There will be a shake down. There has to be. There’s so many. So great beer, clearly branded should be the beer that is still around in five, ten, fifteen years. There’s only so much of that this market can sustain.” Neil Cook