Package Design - November 2012 - 28

Q& A

kevin ford

Beer
Diversity and innovation rise from strong competition in this big and growing market.

Senior brand design project manager for MillerCoors

By Linda Casey

he variety and breadth of the beer market provides fertile ground for package design innovation, and the size of that market is set to grow. Research group MarketLine expects the global beer market to have a value of $523,579.6 million in 2015, which is an increase of 5.8% from its value in 2010. This market is also competitive with craft brewers and multinational brands all competing for the consumers’ attention. To get a better understanding of how these brands excite consumers about their products, Package Design magazine tapped the expertise of Heineken’s head of global design Mark van Iterson (Amsterdam, the Netherlands); MillerCoors senior brand design project manager Kevin Ford (Chicago, IL); Kona Brewing Company president Mattson Davis (Kailua-Kona, HI); Summit Brewing Company’s packaging manager, Kenny Gunderman (Saint Paul, MN); Flint Design Company principal Catherine Healy (Portland, OR); and Hornall Anderson creative director Ben Steele (Seattle, WA). Here’s what they had to share about the top beer-packaging trends and challenges.

centric to illustration-based designs. The second trend is innovative diversity. New technologies in decoration enable a huge variation in design solutions. This broadens the scope from embossing to clear plastic label, from functional inks to hidden light effects. Both trends enrich the beer category with more choice, more added-value and more consumer appeal. They’re driven by three main forces: consumer individualization—consumers are making more personal choices so they want to have more variety to choose from; brand differentiation—brands are clearly defining their own values, target and uniqueness, and want to express that through packaging; and technological progress—there’s simply much more possible than a decade ago. Gunderman: Breweries are using more geographically specific imagery within their packaging designs as a way of showcasing where they’re from. In the craft-beer world, aluminum cans are also a big deal right now, and costs are a major driver behind this design trend. A small canning line can be very affordable for a start-up brewery to purchase, and the lighter overall weight (versus glass in cardboard boxes) can lead to large savings for years to come when it comes to shipping down the road. Steele: Mass-market domestic brands are doing a lot of dynamic things, like

using thermochromic and metallic inks. In the craft-beer market, it’s more about creating a cohesive brand experience than differentiation from a flashy effect. Brands are also doing a lot of things to try to change bottle shape, etc., but the big move we’ve all been seeing is in cans. Our Redhook client has recently introduced this for its craft-beer. A can is an unbroken design canvas that provides the opportunity to really tell a consistent story without the break up of the bottle structure.

A can is an unbroken design canvas that provides the opportunity to really tell a consistent story without the break up of the bottle structure.
And the blue-collar heritage of the can helps democratize craft—some of the preciousness and the elevated perspective of craft are removed when you’re cracking open a can of beer. Ford: For secondary packaging, we’re looking at a die-cut window coupled with a thermochromic ink, such as the cold-activated window for Coors Light. This die-cut area, coupled with a ther-

PD: What are the top graphic and structural design trends?
Iterson: The first trend is eclecticism. More than ever, there’s diversity in styles from very authentic, heritage-based to extremely modernistic, from type28
november 2012

Package Design - November 2012

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