If you are a craft beer brewer, you’ve probably honed your craft for years to get the taste just right. Then you picked the perfect bottle and created your label to evoke the care and flavor of the delicious brew inside. But your problem now is that you never realized just how much thought needed to go into the process of designing and printing the label, right?

That’s okay, because that’s not your primary job. At this point in the process of bringing your product to market, your job becomes establishing a relationship with an experienced printer who already understands the important aspects of creating an effective custom beer label.

Large and Small Breweries Share the Same Concerns

Creating the best possible label for your beer is a common problem for big and small beer brewers alike, including behemoths like Anheuser-Busch. The Bud Light brand just introduced a new “airtight” clear label, so their customers cannot peel it off of the bottle and eliminate their branding efforts.

Because your custom beer label is the public face of your branding, it needs to be the proper shape and the correct size. It also needs to be in line with what your competitors in the industry are doing, so your brand is not out of step with current market preferences. Consumers can be fickle, so it is very important to understand and reflect the latest graphic design trends.

As a craft brewer focused on producing a great beer, you may not being paying close attention to the latest styles in label design. But a professional beer label designer will be keenly aware of industry standards and consumer preferences and take those important aspects into consideration when developing your label. That’s their job, not yours.

Do you know what makes a beer label great?

Here are some things your label designer will consider:

• The bottle shape and label applicator need to be taken into consideration when designing the label. How the label is applied is a critical aspect of the process.
• The paper selection needs to be thought through, to ensure you select the right paper to combat condensation moisture and cold temperatures in refrigerators, coolers or ice buckets.
• The style of the label on the outside of your bottle needs to align with the style of beer on the inside, without being too busy. The label style needs to say everything there is to say to reflect your product and it also needs to stand out on a shelf full of other beer bottle labels vying for the attention of consumers.
• Understanding the latest and most-popular design style trends is the label designer’s responsibility, such as mimicking screen printing with clear on clear or knowing that light colors don’t work well.

I’m a Brewer, So How Do I Do All of This?

If you are a craft beer brewer, you might be wondering what you can do to fix your label design problem. However, the real problem is not how to create the right label, the real problem is how to create the right relationship with a talented and knowledgeable label designer.

When it comes to creating the best possible custom beer labels for your craft beer, you can and should find a partner with enough beer industry insight and experience that allows them to worry about what goes on your bottle while you worry about what goes in your bottle.

Matrix Label Systems has the focus, knowledge and beer industry experience to design a great label for your craft beer. To learn more about how we can make your label as great as your beer, contact us.