North Peak & Grizzly Peak

 

More work from Minneapolis-based Neatly Trimmed Beard whose "Civilized" spirits we featured yesterday:

"Northern United Brewing Company, owners of the two most successful brew pubs in Michigan, North Peak and Grizzly Peak, is making its beer available in stores for the first time. North Peak in six packs of 12 oz stubby bottles. Grizzly Peak in 22 oz high gravity singles -- macro micros. The brewpubs themselves have kind of an old timey log cabin vibe. So we tried to make something that wouldn’t look out of place among the classics – the beers from back in the day. Simple. Clean. Midwestern."

More images after the jump.

Comments

[Stephen Rogers]

Grizzly Peak is my favorite restaurant/brewpub in the whole world! Woohoo!

[Jill Jeziorski]

My absolute favorite bar and beer! Great design, it really captures their atmosphere and attitude.

[@julie_k]

Luke Oeth, designer. Woot.

[Joe]

These look great. I hope I can find them in St. Louis. The stubbies remind me of the cases of Wiedemann's I used to buy at VC when I was in college.

[Brandon]

Excellent nice big images!

[Tim Storck]

Great series of labels.

One thing I would recommend changing would be spending just a few seconds pentool-ing out any of those ligature bumps. On the Majestic label that was the first thing that caught my eye. Same with the "GP" on the neck labels. Fix that and you've got some kick ass labels.

[Nate]

While the packaging is nice, it's obvious the designer has their nose in design periodicals quite a bit. Why do I say this? Because it looks like a blatant swipe of Furthermore beer which is plastered in every PRINT or HOW competition.



Check it out:www.furthermorebeer.com/ourbeer.html

[Carl]

Nate,

Why, because of the diagonal type? If there are any similarities, they end there. But if you want to talk about type, there are umpteen classic old school beer cans with a slanted type treatment. Clearly, both designers are "guilty" of being influenced by those. Print? How? Seems you're the one with your nose in the books, Nate -- or the designer.

[Beer MAN!]

Yeah...have to agree. The Furthermore stuff is super busy.

[Nate]

Don't get me wrong, the design is good.

I'm simply pointing out that it bears a strong resemblance to beer packaging I'm familiar with. Forget the fact that thousands of vintage beer labels employed diagonal type, this we all know. The reason I brought up the allusion to Furthermore is because Grizzly Peak uses the exact same script typeface on a diagonal as Furthermore.

This may have been subconscious in the designer's head, but it's something to be aware of. And, yes, industry publications can sometimes sneak in as "creative influence."

If this beer ever crosses markets with Furthermore (which it very well could since Furthermore is based in Wisconsin), imagine if the two beers sat next to one another on a shelf. The Furthermore six-pack holder is fairly stark and wouldn't create a vast distinction from Grizzly other than by name alone.

Furthermore (no pun intended), the Grizzly Peak packaging as nice as it is, hardly looks different from half the design coming out young guns in the midwest. In fact, at first glance of this label I could not only guess that the design was straight out of the midwest, but Minneapolis specifically. It has the Duffy-Aesthetic Apparatus-Wink-MCAD-Charles S Anderson thing down pat.

Sorry, for the digression. I guess my point is I appreciate the design, but if Grizzly Peak's market is no bigger than the midwest, why look like the competition?

Just my opinion.

[alyson]

what is the script typeface used in these labels?