The craft beer brand's packaging is so good

[China Packaging Network News] Craft Beer is an industry with no hard standards. A definition given by the American Brewers Association BA is that the annual output cannot exceed 6 million barrels (70.2 million tons) per year, the percentage of non-brewers or company organizations cannot exceed 25%, and most beer flavors must be Traditional or innovative raw materials and fermentation processes are available, but this standard will also change with the actual situation.

However, this market is constantly expanding. The craft beer industry has maintained a two-digit growth for eight consecutive years, and the global increase last year was 13%. According to the Brewers Association, 4296 brewers worldwide account for 12% of the entire beer industry. By 2020, this figure is expected to reach 20%.

For brewers, the uncertainty of industry standards and the expanding market means that knowing how to package and how to relate it to lifestyles is becoming more important. This not only refers to “generalization” in the general sense (such as emphasizing natural raw materials, sparse yield, traditional crafts, etc.), but also includes appearance. The interesting design is an important way to craft beer and big commercial brands and to compete with each other. Harvey Shepard, owner of the American beer label design blog Oh Beautiful Beer, said: “If a brewer is willing to spend so much effort and resources on design, I believe they must be equally motivated by their beer craft.”

The "Contromano" to be introduced today is a craft beer brand just born in Rome in May this year. According to the official website, the founding team of this new brand is only 4 people. It consists of a cellist, a winemaker, a beer depth enthusiast and a Roman businessman who is obsessed with electronic music. Currently, it is only sold in Italy.

Contromano is a metaphorical vocabulary in Italian, referring to “walking in the wrong way with a car (or scooter)”; it is also the name of an Italian rock band. As expressed by the brand name, they wanted to be a brand that looked different at first glance, so they sought to serve as a visual reporter for an Italian newspaper during the day, part-time work for local electronic music labels and album covers. Designer Kero to design a complete vision system.

In the program submitted by Kero, you can see the designer's straightforward and distinctive personal style. The brand logo is directly hand-painted, but it replaces O with a red traffic sign that means “no traffic” so that customers can understand the meaning of “mistakes” at a glance.

In beer packaging, all designs are hand-painted and collaged, and intense contrast and detailed hand-drawing bring a wonderful tension. Coral snakes, musical scores, wheat, hops, lighthouses, sea, motorcycles, electronic keyboards, goats, these natural things alternate with artifacts. While emphasizing “natural materials” and “hand-made”, they also highlight Italian local characteristics. Make customers feel more cordial. In addition, you can also see that these elements have incorporated the four founders' interests (music, winemaking) into it.

Contromano's first wine series consists of 8 bottles, categorized by degree and taste. However, the designers did not directly use these classifications as the main visual of the bottle label, but added some interesting Italian slang.

For example, the Lager Wine (4.5%) bottle with a low degree of writing is the Opera Prima (democratic stage) common in the music industry. The pattern is composed of staves and hops.

The “Sopra la panca” on the bottle of stout Bock (7%) is from a famous Italian tongue twister “Sopra la panca la capra campa, sotto la panca la capra crepa.” (meaning “Goat on the bench If you can live, goats under the bench will die. Of course, there is usually no logic for the tongue twister.) The hand-painting matching this sentence is the way two goats stand on a bench fighting each other.