dailies

Odell Brewing Co., my personal local favorite microbrew, won the Graphis Gold Award for their logo, redesigned this year by TBD, a full-service ad agency.

“With a product like Odell, we knew the logo would play an integral role in shaping how the consumer viewed the brand,” said Paul Evers, president and creative director of tbd. “While we measure our accomplishment based on how well Odell is performing in the marketplace—and it’s doing well—it is also very rewarding to be recognized by a prestigious organization like Graphis for our work.”

I’ve always found Odell’s overall design to be one of the more appealing choices of the beer world. Their designs are clean, strong, and reminiscent of block prints. The color palettes are always simplistic and harmonious. Their beer and design campaign is certainly stronger than New Belgium’s, in my opinion. New Belgium has a fantastic, strong logo, but I find their label designs to be lacking punch and too painterly for my taste. And despite being a larger brewery than Odells, their beer lacks soul and character; perhaps that is a by-product of size (e.g., Coors and Budweiser).

No discussion of local brew design would be complete without a mention of my favorite, Flying Dog Brewery. They support local creativity and have a fantastically unique and unapologetic imagery and flare. That’s right, flare (do you have your 16 pieces on?). Heck, Flying Dog even has deep ties to Hunter S. Thompson, and proudly show it with quotes and imagery of him on various labels. Their Gonzo label artist, Ralph Steadman, was a long-time friend of Thompson.