Featured Website: Oh Beautiful Beer

One thing you may not know about me is that I have a Bachelor’s in Graphic Design. It has long been a pas­sion of mine, (like, long mean­ing grade school) to make things look nice. So, this love of mine devel­oped and mor­phed along my nat­u­rally pro­gress­ing love for beer as well. The moment I stum­bled across Oh Beau­ti­ful Beer, I knew I had found some­thing truly amaz­ing. Read on to find out how this site per­fectly melds both of my true loves: great beer and great art.

Web­site: Oh Beau­ti­ful Beer
Creator/Author: Har­vey Shep­ard
I don’t remem­ber how I dis­cov­ered it, but the day I found OBB was a great day indeed. I imme­di­ately added it to my list of morn­ing tabs vis­ited and even added it to the short list of RSS feeds I sub­scribe to. The clincher for me was that the site didn’t force any­thing on me, it sim­ply offered what the author found to be inter­est­ing and beau­ti­ful, and I could take it or leave it. Well, as it turned out, I took it, almost every time.

I had a chance to vir­tu­ally sit down with Har­vey, the brains and eye­balls behind this fab­u­lous site. Check out what he had to say.

The Brew Bros: First off, who are you? What do you do when you’re not blog­ging about beer?

Oh Beau­ti­ful Beer: I’m a graphic designer from Mass­a­chu­setts for­tu­nate enough to have a wife that encour­ages look­ing at pic­tures of beer for hours on end. When I’m not doing that, I love the Red Sox, being out­doors, play­ing music and work­ing on design projects. My wife and I move fre­quently for her work, so I also spend plenty of time plot­ting brew­ery and beer fes­ti­val vis­its along the way.

TBB: What is your rela­tion­ship to beer ? Do you home­brew, or just enjoy drink­ing and look­ing at the beauty of brews?

OBB: I enjoy beer in as many ways as I can. I love drink­ing it, brew­ing it, star­ing at the designs and cook­ing with it. Schlafly actu­ally makes an Oat­meal Stout sham­poo. I think I’m ready to take it to that level.

TBB: Ok, that’s freak­ing hys­ter­i­cal, haha. I have to ask, are you tak­ing the pho­tos on the site, or are you find­ing
them/getting them from the design­ers? *Because I have to say, they’re very nice to my eyeballs.

OBB: They are very nice, but sadly, I can’t take the credit. Brew­eries and design­ers have been incred­i­bly sup­port­ive, includ­ing send­ing along all of those beau­ti­ful hi-res prod­uct shots.

TBB: When did you start Oh Beau­ti­ful Beer ? How long did it take you to “get it” or “get it right”?

OBB: The site actu­ally started as a blog post. I wanted to write some­thing design-related that non-designers could get into. Beer seemed like the per­fect sub­ject. I did a lot of research to dig up great brew­ery logos and pack­ag­ing, which pro­duced a moun­tain of mate­r­ial. It struck me that I didn’t know of any sites com­pletely ded­i­cated to beer pack­ag­ing, so I gave it a whirl.

The site launched on Feb­ru­ary 25, and hasn’t changed too much since then. I received some great ini­tial feed­back on Forrst that really helped with the over­all direction.

TBB: So, you clearly have an awe­some taste in design. But as design­ers our selves, we both know that there is a big dif­fer­ence rec­og­niz­ing great design, and cre­at­ing great design. Have you ever cre­ated any­thing that you would deem wor­thy of being on your own site?

OBB: I’m actu­ally work­ing on an iden­tity for a Massachusetts-based micro­brew­ery right now. I’m very happy with it, but I think it’d be weird to fea­ture any of my own work on ohbeautifulbeer.com.

TBB: Well, let me know when it’s done, I would be hon­ored to fea­ture it here. What role does design play in beer. I ask this very gen­er­ally on pur­pose. Please answer the ques­tion in regard to: mar ket­ing, sales, con­sump­tion, com­pet­ing shelf space, or pure pri­vate enjoy­ment, whichever you prefer.

OBB: For bet­ter or worse, mar­ket­ing plays a big role in prod­ucts we buy and beer is no excep­tion. With more than 12,000 brew­eries world­wide, each needs to sep­a­rate them­selves from the crowd in any and every way pos­si­ble. Design is a very effec­tive means to do just that.

Mar­ket­ing also affects how we per­ceive the beer itself. I’d love to run an exper­i­ment where I gave con­sumers a sam­ple of the same beer in a blank tast­ing glass, a generic-looking can and a beau­ti­fully designed 22oz bot­tle with a high price tag. I guar­an­tee the pre­sen­ta­tion would affect how the aver­age beer drinker rated a par­tic­u­lar beer.

TBB: How do you find/choose what ends up on your site? It seems to me like your bat­ting a thou­sand every time you post. Is it just one of those things where you wait until you find the right post and the BLAM! you nail it?

OBB: I have spent more time than I’d care to admit scour­ing the inter­net for great labels. The liquor store has been a great resource too. I have no prob­lem being that guy wan­der­ing the store shelves, tak­ing dozens of cell phone pic­tures in the craft beer section.

There’s also a place on the site to sub­mit designs, and I’ve received tons of great sub­mis­sions from design­ers, brew­eries and readers.

Orig­i­nally, I thought I would post once or twice a week. But there’s been so much great mate­r­ial that 6+ months later, I’m still post­ing five times a week.

TBB: What inspires you to con­tinue pur­su­ing a “career ” in beer ? Like me I’m sure what you do is more pas­sion than any­thing else. Tell me about the mean­ing behind your work.

OBB: At some point in my teenage years, a career coun­selor had me cre­ate a lengthy list of things that I would love to do with my time if income was not a fac­tor. I was then asked to think of, or invent, jobs that com­bined as many of these listed items as pos­si­ble. At the time I thought “I don’t think the Red Sox will ever need a bullpen catcher who can cook pregame bacon souf­flés and rock out on the bass gui­tar while con­vers­ing with the fans in per­fect German.”

But that exer­cise really stuck with me. It seems nat­ural to want to com­bine things that you love, and that’s def­i­nitely what dri­ves Oh Beau­ti­ful Beer. I’ll never get sick of star­ing at qual­ity design work, espe­cially when it’s wrapped around twelve ounces of beer.

TBB: Where do you want to see the site in the future? Where can it go?

OBB: When the site first launched, I think my entire plan was “I’ll post pretty pic­tures and hope­fully peo­ple will like them.”

As it turned out, peo­ple did like them. So now I’m bat­ting around the same ques­tion, what next? It’s still early, and there’s no need to rush. But look for sub­tle growth that hope­fully won’t ruin the sim­plic­ity of the site’s orig­i­nal focus.

TBB: What would have to hap­pen for you to quit your day job and jump into beer blog­ging full time? Paint me your dream pic­ture, I know you have one!

OBB: I do cer­tainly dream about the day my wife and I are free to fly around the world to every brew­ery, con­ven­tion and beer fes­ti­val we care to visit.

With that said, I really enjoy my day job, and the mix of blog­ging and design­ing is an enjoy­able one.

TBB: Con­sid­er­ing you are (at least to me and The Brew Bros fans) the lead­ing source on every­thing beau­ti­ful in beer, would you ever con­sider tak­ing the site fur­ther ? I mean, there are so many oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­fer­ences, com­mit­tees, schol­ar­ships, intern­ships, etc etc.

OBB: I think there might be poten­tial areas for growth. As a beer lover, I really enjoy get­ting to beer weeks and fes­ti­vals, so now I’m look­ing at how OBB can con­tribute on those fronts.

Scholarships/internships are a great thought, too. A lot of stu­dent work has been fea­tured on OBB and that would be a nat­ural fit.

TBB: It seems like what you already do could actu­ally help change the face of beer . Are you an activist at heart? Do you really want to change the way brew­eries make and design beer?

OBB: No, I’m not look­ing to inspire change; I just want to shine some light on the brew­eries that do have great design, and the design­ers behind those beau­ti­ful beers.

But, if things take off and this becomes a movie, I def­i­nitely want a scene where I pub­licly burn ugly beer pack­ag­ing, backed by dra­matic bag­pipe music.

TBB: This one is a dou­ble ques­tion, but I guess they all are, aren’t they, haha. First, what is your absolute favorite beer right now in terms of taste (what would you drink right now if you could have any­thing?) Sec­ond, what is your absolute top brew in terms of design?

OBB: As far as taste, I tend to change things up a lot. I’m not that guy that walks into the bar and orders “the usual.” I def­i­nitely trend towards the darker end of the beer spec­trum, browns, blacks, porters, stouts, etc. I recently had Rogue’s Hazel­nut Brown Nec­tar at a beer bar in Lit­tle Rock and was absolutely blown off my stool.

And as far as design…boy…I don’t know if I can pick a favorite here. But I moved to Texas recently, and I will say that I am absolutely thrilled to be able to walk into liquor stores and see the beau­ti­ful Shiner fam­ily adorn­ing the shelves.

TBB: There are clearly crappy look­ing labels, cases, and even crappy look­ing brew­eries. On the con­trary, there are awe­some brew­eries that do well, and even some that fail. What role does design play in the suc­cess of a brand and/or brewery?

OBB: The craft beer busi­ness is a gold rush right now. There are plenty of stores with enor­mous amounts of shelf space ded­i­cated to beer. If I’m star­ing at seem­ingly thou­sands of beers on a shelf, I’m not likely to pick up a beer I’ve never tried unless the pack­ag­ing piques my interest.

Of course, I’m not going to con­tinue buy­ing that beer unless I’m happy with the con­tents, but the pack­ag­ing gets the foot in the door. The brand with the unpro­fes­sional design is going to stay on the shelf, no mat­ter how good the prod­uct is.

TBB: What advice (design or oth­er­wise) would you give a young entre­pre­neur with the dream to cre­ate a killer brew­ery? How would you advise they move forward?

OBB: First and fore­most, make good beer.

Sec­ondly, unless they’re skilled design­ers, don’t cut cor­ners by hav­ing your sec­ond cousin or your paper­boy or your buddy’s brother cre­ate the pack­ag­ing. Come out of the gate with qual­ity design work to sup­port your beer.

Brook­lyn Brew­ery and Austin Beer­works imme­di­ately come to mind as brew­eries that got it right. At pre-launch they went to top-notch design­ers (Mil­ton Glaser and Helms Work­shop, respect­fully) to han­dle their iden­tity. This cer­tainly played an impor­tant role in their ini­tial (and long-term) successes.

And lastly, once you have your designer, trust them. I was for­tu­nate enough to meet Brook­lyn Brew­ery founder Steve Hindy at a tast­ing in Char­lotte ear­lier this year. He men­tioned that he was ini­tially under­whelmed by Mil­ton Glaser’s logo con­cept. Mil­ton encour­aged him to sit on it for a week, show­ing it to no one but his wife. After that week, Brook­lyn Brew­ery had its now renowned logo.

TBB: Last ques­tion, who is doing it right? If there are the “Beau­ti­ful Beer Awards” who would you give it to? I won’t ask you the alter­na­tive, haha.

OBB: You’re really try­ing to get me to name favorites, aren’t you? Well, I’ve ran about 150 posts, and I have another 100 queued up, and I really do love them all. But if I were to pull out some of the site’s “fre­quent fly­ers,” Odell, New Bel­gium, Shiner, Big Boss, Left Hand, Fly­ing Dog, Red Brick and Schmaltz imme­di­ately come to mind.

From a design stand­point, some of the firms that have made their way onto the site on mul­ti­ple occa­sions include Helms Work­shop, TBD, Cul­ti­va­tor Adver­tis­ing, McK­in­ney, Matt Polacheck and Landor.

—————-

I want to per­son­ally thank Har­vey for tak­ing the loads of time all of my bor­ing ques­tions must have taken to answer. I really enjoyed read­ing his responses, and I am sure you did, too. It is really nice to get a taste of beer from a dif­fer­ent one of our senses. Please do me a huge per­sonal favor and book­mark Harvey’s site, and check it every day.

Also, please leave your thoughts on design, brew­eries, brand­ing, mar­ket­ing, and any­thing else we’ve dis­cussed here.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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Dane

Dane Mentzer is a young man with a love for beer and a pas­sion for peo­ple. He prides myself on a well-established nose and palate, with a widely devel­oped vocab­u­lary. The only thing he loves more than beer is peo­ple, and that is where life gets excit­ing. In addi­tion to found­ing The Brew Bros, He has also estab­lished “Beer Into Water” a non-for-profit orga­ni­za­tion aimed at host­ing beer events in order to quench the thirst of chil­dren around the world. Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion as that char­ity comes to fruition. His favorite style is the Impe­r­ial India Pale Ale, although it changes with the sea­sons. His favorite brew at the time is Arc­tic Panzer Wolf by 3 Floyds.

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