What My Beer Can Collection Taught Me About Graphic Design

When I was a kid, I owned an amazing beer can collection. My biggest supplier were my grandparents, who owned and operated a hotel and bar that served steelworkers in the (then) steel capital of the world?—?Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Since my grandfather regularly ordered beer by the keg, he knew all the biggest distributors in town, and would occasionally ask them, on behalf of their 10-year-old grandson down in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, whether they had any interesting beer cans they could spare.

I also purchased cans through a mail order catalog.

My father had shelves installed in my room so I could display them.

At the time, of course, I was just a kid collecting cool-looking beer cans. I never contemplated what it might mean, or what I might learn from it. It was my hobby. It was fun.

What made me want to collect beer cans? What was it about the design, the packaging, the naming?—?all of the key elements that make up commercial product design, in other words —that drove me to obsessively gather every single beer can I could lay my hands on?

As a young boy collecting these things, I was oblivious, of course, to the tools and techniques the designers of the cans had deliberately deployed to make them appealing to beer drinkers.

Except for a one-off incident?—?which has since been inscribed into family lore?—?in which my younger brother and I cracked open a can of Budweiser to see what it actually tasted like and ended up sprawled out on the sofa, I certainly wasn’t into the contents of the cans.

As I peer back through the haze of memories, it occurs to me that I might have learned something about branding and design?—?if only to a small extent at least?—?from that wonderful beer collection I once owned.

In his recent book, A Kidd’s Guide To Graphic Design, Chip Kidd (designer of over 1,000 book covers, including Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park), explains—?and visually demonstrates, in a beautifully illustrated volume bound by an extra-thick cover that has the feel of a children’s book?—?why graphic design is important, and what it is. The book is organized into four chapters covering each of the four elements of graphic design: form, typography, content, and concept.

In the introduction to his book, Kidd explains,

graphic design is problem-solving (and sometimes making something really cool in the process)

So what problem were beer can designers trying to tackle?

Perhaps this: How do you bridge the gap between the cold, inanimate, aluminum (or steel) can, that not only contains but even hides the product inside, and the person who is trying to decide whether to plunk down hard earned cash in exchange for an otherwise invisible product that will help him quench his thirst?

Not an easy feat, come to think of it.

Telepathy is one word that comes to mind. Telepathy, between an inanimate object, and a living, breathing, thirsty human being.

And through what medium did beer marketers rely upon to accomplish this feat of communication? Graphic design.

Ultimately, all beer can designs had essentially the same communication function: to persuade beer drinkers to choose one brand of beer over another. Of course, other important marketing elements came into play before a beer drinker made the decision to purchase one brand rather than another: price, promotion, shelf placement. Yet it was the design on the can that probably tipped the balance when it came to deciding which brand he should buy.

By wielding the tools of graphic design, beer marketers tried to convey the primary attribute of their product: the taste. And since, as any beer aficionado understands, no two brands or varieties of beer taste alike, it should follow that no two beer can designs should look alike. Thus the proliferation of beer can designs.

Of course, graphic design elements are not unique to beer cans. I can see design concepts in action in the packaging design of everything I buy or use today. Even though I focus here on vintage beer cans, the type I collected several decades ago, beer can design has certainly not gone out of vogue. Today’s beer bottle and can designs are as creative and colorful as ever, boosted as well by the explosion of craft breweries worldwide.

Nonetheless, I thought I’d lean on faded memories of my beer can collection to share a few reflections on graphic design, viewed through the four elements as described by Kidd:

Form

“Form is simply what things look like”, Kidd states in chapter 1. He then introduces 20 different attributes of form, from simplicity to colors to positive and negative space.

Take color. Kidd says,

colors communicate in ways that words just can’t…The emotional power of color is considerable and can greatly affect the way your design is perceived by the viewer.

Indeed. Looking at photos of vintage beer cans, I'm struck by how often red was used. On some cans, there's just a splash of red; on others, it's the only color. Kidd claims red, as a “warm color”, can “express both anger and joy.” I would assume beer can designers were trying to convey the latter, of course. There’s an obvious pattern I detected across the variety of beer brands in their frequent use of red.

Gold is another color that seems to pop up on these designs, perhaps to convey premium quality. A number of brands used blue or green, perhaps to communicate coolness and freshness.

Visual variation is another technique deployed often by beer can designers. Kidd says,

many different color schemes and typographic styles can coexist in a way that can please the eye without confusing it

Type set in three or four very different fonts, a coat of arms, an authoritative seal from a beer competition won a century prior, a tagline (“Famous beer”, “Special export”), all fall together on the surface of the can, creating a silently visual plea to the beer buyer.

Just enough variation to make the can appealing, but without overdoing it. Indeed, the overall simplicity of many of the designs stands out: Logos framed by circles or other very simple geometric shapes, uniform swatches of primary colors (red, very often), all set against a white canvas.

Shape often played an important supporting role in a beer can’s design. The most coveted beer cans in my collection, the ones I pursued with the greatest vigor and passion, were the so-called “cone tops.” These were cans with a funnel-shaped top that were generally out of production by the time I was collecting back in the late 1970s. They were rare, and their rarity and difficulty in obtaining only increased their perceived value, which translated into higher market prices, of course.

Owning one was like owning a dinosaur fossil.

Image credit: defekto/Flickr

Typography

In chapter 2, Kidd eloquently evokes the power of typography:

when [the letters of the alphabet] are put into certain combinations, we can conjure, out of nothing, pictures, sounds, tastes, smells, feelings, worlds, entire universes, and place them directly into the reader’s head.

Typefaces. Talk about typographic variety! The designers tasked with selecting typefaces, or developing new ones, for yesterday’s beer cans, seemed to have an unlimited palette of design options to choose from.

Beer cans often combined several different type styles. Serif fonts were juxtaposed against sans serif fonts (a technique commonly deployed in web design today, by the way).

Other cans deployed cursive fonts when describing their beer as “light”, which presumably meant low-calorie. Or to position their beer as “premium”, “select”, “special”, “special export”.

Beers that attempted to evoke the “Old World” of Europe often made use of gothic fonts.

Content

Form and typography are tools for communicating a message. So what were beer makers trying to say about their brand of beer? What was their message? This is where content comes into play. As Kidd puts it, content is about figuring out your communication objective:

For any given design problem, you have to ask: What is this trying to do? What is the content’s purpose? This purpose is called a function. And once you determine its function, its form?—?or what it’s going to look like?—?will follow.

Not surprisingly, of course, the communication objective?—?the function?—?of most beer brands, was to communicate the attributes of the beer itself, in all its permutations of flavor (“lager”, “pale ale”, “pilsener”, “malt”, “stout”, “extra dry”), quality (“premium”, “special”), heritage (“brewed since 1891", “America’s oldest brewers”), and even caloric content (“light”, “only 96 calories”).

Sometimes, a can’s design focused very little on the product itself?—?the beer?—?and instead sought to communicate a specific message wholly unrelated to the product inside the can. I’m referring here to special edition cans to commemorate events, such as Iron City Beer’s series celebrating the consecutive Super Bowl victories of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s, Miller Lite’s can celebrating the Dallas Cowboy’s victory in Super Bowl XXIII, or Ballantine’s special edition to mark America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976.

There were the collectible series?—?highly coveted by myself and other collectors?—?such as the 007 series featuring James Bond in action, a series featuring each year’s winners of the famed Kentucky Derby horse race, or a series of wildlife, hunting and fishing images on a series produced by Schmidt.

Concept

Kidd introduces the fourth and final element of graphic design, Concept, which he describes as the “idea of what to do.” Concept can be communicated through the use of metaphor, irony, and what he calls, “visual flavor”.

Many beer can designs made ample use of literal depictions of images of barley and hops, or a frothy glass of cold beer, to evoke the flavor of the beer, or sketches of waterfalls and streams, to convey the freshness and purity of the water used to brew the beer.

Coats of arms, seals, and other symbols of royal heritage were another type of commonly used imagery on beer cans, to communicate heritage and quality.

Not all designs were so literal in their use of imagery, however. Abstract geometric lines, shapes, and patterns were prevalent, and probably often used for purely decorative purposes. Sometimes, however, abstract designs were used to communicate less abstract concepts. For example, the use of diamond shapes to convey premium quality, or triangles that evoked the shape of barley, an essential ingredient in beer.

Kidd notes that typography is a powerful way to communicate concepts, and vintage beer cans clearly made liberal use of this approach. For example, gothic fonts were used to evoke images of the “Old Country”.

Similar to the use of gothic fonts, several brands played up their European roots (or perhaps concocted them for the sake of marketing, it seems) through the use of German words sprinkled liberally on the can: “bier”, “br?u”, “bohemian”, “bavarian”.

***

In the decades that have passed since I built (and lost, alas) my beer can collection, I’ve become more conscious of the ubiquitousness of graphic design. I rely on graphic design to create, solve problems, and make decisions large and small every day.

So did my long hours collecting and admiring beer cans from all ends of the earth, several decades ago, teach me something about graphic design that I apply to my work today?

Perhaps. The connection is tenuous, I confess.

But that was one awesome beer can collection I had.

Top image credit: Alicia Lynn / Flickr

Glenn Leibowitz is Director of External Relations for McKinsey & Company’s Greater China Practice. He’s led their publishing, media relations, branding, and digital marketing efforts for the past 15 years. He blogs at glennleibowitz.com and on Medium. Follow him on Twitter here.