Craft labels are too "busy"

I was looking at craft beers at Bev Mo where they have two entire rows of craft beer. I couldn't find anything because all the labels were so over the top, and all the names were too creative.

I love good simple labels with a nice simple piece of artwork on it.

Rogue, Stone, 3 Floyds, Doghead... most of the more succesful breweries dont fall into the trap of "graffiti on the bottle" as I call it.

I'm sure I passed on some good beers because I didn't want to strain to read the label or figure out what the beer actually was.

-rant over-

3 Floyds is the king of psychadelic graffiti bottles.

I feel the exact same way. But I think the labels reflect the "beer philosophy" of the brewing company... for instance, all the extreme IPAs try to convey their "X-factor" extremeness with crazy labels and names.

My eye ALWAYS ends up around clear labels that convey something direct and concise. Goose Island's vintage line is nice. North Coast is one of my favorite company's and I've always liked their art. Their beers are easily identifiable and separable because they each have a dominating color and theme (Scrimshaw, Blue Star, Old Rasputin, Red Seal, etc.)

Art is subjective - as a graphic designer that's all I have to add to this.

I kind of agree. I really like some Flying Dog beers but I didn't even try any of them for a long time because their labels are so ugly.

shoreman said:

Art is subjective - as a graphic designer that's all I have to add to this.

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True for art but not for package design. Package design should be heads on. You will need to look at the segmentations who buys the product. From there, design the product/label. You would never go 100% black malt in a beer and think it will be good. Some stuff just doesn't make a good executed label.

shoreman said:

Art is subjective - as a graphic designer that's all I have to add to this.

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Toasty_Mammoth said:

I kind of agree. I really like some Flying Dog beers but I didn't even try any of them for a long time because their labels are so ugly.

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I am a huge fan of Ralph Steadman's work.

Totally agree ...