Colorado is known for their epic plethora of craft beers. We’re home to 147 craft breweries (according to the Brewers Association), which puts us in 4th place for most breweries per capita in the U.S. With great beer, I think, comes great design. The majority of my favorite design pieces are from the liquor industry. Absolut produced iconic print advertising. Budweiser gave us the Clydesdales commercials. And, craft beers give us some of the best packaging and label design out there.
Because I’m a design geek, I love to go to liquor stores to check out the new packaging designs and take pictures of my favorites. I’ve seen some phenomenally talented illustrators and typographers do fantastic work with labels, carriers and bottles. This weekend, I decided to take pictures of some of the best packaging the Rocky Mountain State had to offer.
I’m featuring designs from Bristol Brewery (Colorado Springs), Great Divide Brewery (Denver), Left Hand Brewery (Longmont), The Fort Collins Brewery (Fort Collins), Odell Brewery (Fort Collins), New Belgium Brewery (Fort Collins) and Breckenridge Brewery (Breckenridge).
I have to give a big shout out to Colorado Springs’ Bristol Brewery labels as they were designed by local illustrator extraordinaire and a friend of mine, Luke Flowers. I love it’s a local beer institution, and they kept the design work local as well.
Actually, Bristol Brewery did a pretty cool thing. They bought an old elementary school in a rundown neighborhood and revitalized it to be a resource for the community. Ivywild School is not only the new home of Bristol, but they have a butcher shop, bakery, bike shop, community garden, weekend farmer’s market, cocktail bar and community event space inside. It’s been a huge success for our city and has encouraged everyone to shop local as well as helped start urban renewal in the Ivywild neighborhood.
I also really enjoy the rebrand that New Belgium Brewery did. I think their branding and packaging are a lot more consistent now compared to the previous designs. I love the simple illustrations, clean typography and bold colors.
Left Hand, Odell’s, and Fort Collins Brewery have great, vintage-style illustrations. I love that they are carrying on a hand-drawn and hand-lettered style.
Great Divide goes clean and simple with bold typography and colors with just some minor illustrative accents. Those definitely appeal to my love of fonts.
Enjoy the photos. It’s a small representation of the vast amount of beer flowing in Colorful Colorado, but I think it’s some of the best. What are your favorite beer labels?
Bristol Brewery
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