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25 March 2011
Oh Beautiful Beer is a website celebrating "remarkable graphic design from the world of beer" that I thought some of you might enjoy.
Neat! The problem inherent to beer design is that there's really only two ways you can brand your beer anymore.
There's the old-timey, kind of rusty and vintage sans-serif look that's meant to relate to every common beer-drinking guy in the United States. "I'm not uppity or prententious. Just picked up a sixpacka brewskies." For examples of this, see 90% of everything on that website.
Then there's the "uppity or pretentious" beer, also known by the euphemism "classy." Basically anything with a serif typeface, or a color scheme not mainly involving brown and manly red, seems to be going for this look.
When my roommate picks up a 48-pack of Natty Light and I (unpopularly) pick up a 6-pack of Newcastle, I will remember the good times I had with this link.
Nothing will ever beat Olde Frothingslosh, a brand made up for fake commercials by a Pittsburgh disc jockey that a local brewery made into a real seasonal product that has been made available as recently as 2007. My father brought home a bottle* on a business trip when I was an infant and it, still unopened, is one of his few personal possessions with any whimsey.
*with the same version of the label in the link... there were many, including a series of cans with an embarrassing hurf-durfish bathing beauty as Miss Frothingslosh. But that label is how I want the beer to be remembered.
My neighborhood package store has this poster hanging in it, and I've always meant to ask them if I can have it if they ever decide to get rid of it. I love the crop circle just visible in the upper right.