Craft beer is going down incredibly well— all over the world. The Brewers Association reports that around 6,500 craft breweries are operating in the United States alone. Consumers crave more authentic craft beers, with half of men and almost a third of women surveyed in 2018 saying they drink craft beer.
But, while the boom is great for brewers, it comes with the challenge of how to stand out from the crowd.
With competition fierce between brewing companies, the challenge for them is to develop labels that give them the edge in the marketplace. In fact, label design has become an art form in itself, fuelling competition even further.
“A good label is something that someone would want blown up and framed on their wall,” comments Keith Shore, Art Director for Mikkeller Brewing. “I always lean on loud colors, clunky shapes and friendly faced characters,” he adds.
Mikkeller designs and produces upwards of 200 labels each year. In order to help the brewery, and others like it, to bring their ideas to life, HP has reinvented the printing process and created a special digital press.
The sheet-fed press offers a wide range of substrates, speciality inks, and effects that enable businesses to forge unique designs. And it achieves up to 98 percent of Pantone colours, printing stunning artwork onto a variety of materials: from paper to foil.
So, with HP’s digital press solutions, designers and beermakers like Mikkeller can get the exact look they want and, stand out amongst the competition.