What You Need to Know About Beer Label Design

Tip 1: Consider your target consumer.

Like most marketing initiatives, label design should start with a careful consideration of your target consumer. Whether you’re designing labels for your modest home brew operation or a large local brewery’s latest IPA, begin by thinking about who the beer is most suited for. Friends and family? Experience seekers? People looking to party? Or rather people looking for a nice quiet drink at home with friends? Connoisseurs interested in a new take on beer taste? Or people interested in a perfected traditional beer?

Sometimes it’s helpful to create a profile of a few ideal consumers for your product. Who are these people? Consider their lifestyle, their careers, their friends, where they go and what they do. With these profiles in mind you can put yourself in the shoes of your target consumers. These profiles are also called ‘personas’ and are all the rage with marketers these days. For good reason!

Tip 2: Tout your unique selling points.

After having considered what makes your consumers unique, now we’ll focus on what makes your product unique. There are a lot of beers out there, so ratcheting up the singularity of your product is imperative in gaining adoption in a crowded marketplace.

Make a list of what is unique about your product. Start with the product itself – how it tastes, what’s in it. Expand from there. What is unique about the ethos of the company? Perhaps its location is a selling point, or the particular humor and fun that happens at the office, or the history of the product. Maybe the namesake is a unique selling point. With a comprehensive list of what makes you YOU, your labels will be that much richer.

Tip 3: Consider the history.

Beer has been around for a long time. Its history is something that beer aficionados like to consider and it’s important to take this into account when designing a label.

What tradition does your beer come from? Are you interested in the American beer tradition? Does prohibition and the ethos of the ‘20s strike your fancy? Or are you more interested in the monks in Europe who made Belgian Tripels? Considering the vast and complex history of beer making can give your label some timeless qualities that you can marry with something more of the moment.

Tip 4: Turn up the volume to stand out from the crowd.

Whether at a bar, tasting room or at the grocery store, beers usually come in a wide selection. You’ve got a lot of competition on both sides of you. So a major task is to stand out from the crowd. Turning up the volume on your design is a great first step into making a great label.

What do we mean by “turning up the volume?” Whatever design elements you’ve chosen to go with, make them a little more extreme and a little more streamlined. You have about two seconds to catch the eye and appeal to the buyer.

Here are some stand-out examples of beer labels that stand out from the crowd.