Designing Great Labels
“You’ve got to try my new brown ale,” my good friend says to me. I know it’s a brown ale because he has scribbled “BA” on the bottle cap with a green marker. Later that evening I open the ambiguous, little brown bottle and pour myself a glass of rich, foaming ale. Good beer. But from the very moment the bottle crossed my field of vision, something was missing. That something is known as “the first impression.”
Picture this: You finally introduce your batch of two-year-old barleywine to a good friend and beer connoisseur. You pull two bottles from the fridge and present them. Two identical labels, splashed with color, announcing proudly the name of the beer in big, bold letters. Smaller print boasts of the ingredients blended together to form your masterful creation. The label also speaks of a date, some two years earlier, when the beer was locked away from the world like a little time capsule. Very impressive! Before that first wisp of vapor is encountered, before that bittersweet bite of malt hits the tongue, before the warmth of the alcohol comforts the soul — the beer is experienced!
It’s not difficult to create stunning labels that will enhance the ambiance of your beer. What is perhaps more important, affixing and removing labels, can be the easiest part of labeling. Forget those 48-hour soakings to remove those stubborn, self-adhesive labels. In fact with the right technique, labeling can be as easy as “press and peel.” Press it on before it goes into the refrigerator. Peel it off when the bottle is emptied.
Any serious homebrewer knows that labeling is a necessary project — especially if they brew more than one batch at a time. Your American pale ale and Czech-style pilsner look strikingly similar side by side in the cold, pale light of the refrigerator. We need labels. Labels discern one batch from another. Dated labels remind us how fresh our beer is. Perhaps, most important, they give our beer a name and a face.
Designing Labels
Almost every label I’ve ever seen on a bottle of homebrew has been nothing more than plain type printed on self-adhesive paper run through a laser printer. In addition to the fact that these labels are hard to remove, they also have several other drawbacks. Sometimes the labels will peel from the backing as they travel through the printer and wrap themselves around a roller. The type can also be difficult to align in the constrained space allotted by the paper manufacturer. And because the space is constrained, your design often becomes cramped.
I use plain laser paper for all my labels. Not only is the shape of my label left up to me, but laser paper is a heck of a lot cheaper than adhesive paper. Don’t worry about attaching the labels; that’s the easy part.
Begin by playing with a few typefaces until you find one that “looks” like your beer. Try different sizes and different effects. Most drawing programs on PC and Macintosh computers have several built-in effects that can augment type with the click of a mouse. Finding a good typeface should be relatively easy, but suppose you want some art?
The Internet is a great place to find art. In fact there are so many downloadable images on the Internet that finding art should never be a problem. For my “New Harvest Moon Autumn Brew” I found an actual photograph of a moon on a science Web site. I set the moon on a black sky, ran some white type across the side of my image area, labeled the ingredients, and had an impressive label in about five minutes.
Computer scanners are great for the addition of art. You can add your personal photographs to any label with a scanner and your design potential becomes limitless. If you don’t have access to a scanner at home or work, bring your photograph and a floppy disk down to a quicky printer and have them scan it for you. Have the image scanned at as high a resolution as possible. If the image resolution is saved too low, the art will be pixilated and the quality poor. On the other hand a high- resolution image will not fit on your floppy disk and could cause nightmares during printing. A resolution of about 100 to 150 dots per inch (dpi) should be adequate for label design.
I presented a bottle of mead to my sister on her first wedding anniversary. On the label was a full-color picture of her and her husband on their wedding day. I don’t have a color printer, so I took the image to a photocopy center and let them output it for a few bucks. My sister loves the bottle so much she still hasn’t tasted the mead!
You don’t need a high-quality color printer to create colorful labels. Plain laser printers are ideal for adding spot color to your labels. For my “Winterfest Celebration Ale” I created a nighttime winter scene on a reversed label (page 52). Because the type was surrounded by black, I was able to add color with a yellow-gold marker in a matter of seconds without worrying about going out of the lines. I added green to the pine trees and left the stars and the snow white against the black of night. It only took 15 minutes to add color to 40 labels. As my family and friends celebrated Christmas eve, the beer went down smoothly and the celebration was fine.
With a good laser printer, a drawing program, and a couple of cool typefaces, you’ve got yourself a miniature label production center. You can crank out beautiful labels to give your beer a special touch. Your friends are going to be even more impressed!
Printing, Affixing, and Removing
Now for the easy part.
You should duplicate as many labels as possible in the image area of the paper size you plan to print. Arrange your labels so that one knife or scissors slice will separate them from each other. But don’t cut them just yet!
The easiest and most accessible way to affix labels is to invest $1.50 in a glue stick. I use a glue stick with a clear adhesive that is applied through a roller located at the tip of the implement. I suggest that you find a glue stick with a liquid or gelatinous adhesive, because they seem to glide easier. But the “lipstick”-type glues work well enough, if that’s all you have. The glue I have found to work the best is manufactured by Pentel.
Turn a table into your work station while taking the proper safety precautions, such as protecting your surfaces with newspaper. Then apply one streak of glue down both sides of your paper and one down the middle so that one small streak of glue has been applied to each side of the labels. Don’t use too much glue. One thin streak will be more than enough to affix your labels to their prospective bottles.
Cut the labels out and tack them onto your bottles. If you find your labels dry too quickly, an easy solution is to cut the labels out before adding the adhesive. Then just dab a little glue on each corner and press the labels to the bottle.
The labels will stay on your bottle until the day you decide to peel them off. Because you’ve only used a touch of glue, they will peel off easily.
A Few More Suggestions…
Always put the date the beer was bottled on your label. Labels should be pragmatic as well as aesthetic. If you’ve lagered a dopplebock for six months, declare that on your label. Use your labels to brag about your beer.
If you don’t have adequate drawing software, there are plenty of shareware trial versions on the Internet. Also, there are trial versions of photo-lab software that can be used to tone and enhance your photographs or tonal artwork. These trial versions usually last for 30 days before you are expected to buy them.
If you’re having trouble finding that special piece of art, call up your favorite search engine and run a find on “clip art.” There are literally thousands of clip-art sites on the Internet. Much of this art is designed for graphics professionals, but homebrewers are not excluded.
You can hand draw your labels if you don’t have a computer. The labels should be drawn large and then reduced to the appropriate size with the help of a copy machine. Just make sure you use black marker for the design, as graphite does not reproduce well. Reproduce as many copies as you need and save your original for next time. You can use all of the techniques described to attach and remove your labels.
And finally, have fun. That’s what brewing beer is about anyway. If you don’t enjoy art or you’re just not good at it, then ask an artistic friend to design something for you. Artists are usually flattered by such requests, especially if there is beer involved.
