Project
Four beers, four rampant creatures: a system of labels that makes the brand recognisable and tells the products apart.
Birra Amiata: a heraldic bestiary on the shelf
- Area
- Identity
- Year
- 2018
Birra Amiata brews unpasteurised, unfiltered craft beer in Arcidosso, in the province of Grosseto. The territory is that of Monte Amiata and the Maremma, and it ends up inside the beers: chestnut flour and chestnut honey, wheat, hops.
A shelf of craft beers is crowded, and the decision lasts a second. In that second the label has to do two jobs at once, and they pull against each other. Make the brand recognisable, and set that beer apart from the others under the same brand.
The structure of the label does not move. What changes is the creature and the colour.
Malìa, Macchiaiola, Marronbona, Maremmamara. Every name begins with M, and it is not an affectation. It is the first level of the system: before you even look at the label, the name says that this beer belongs to the same family. They are names drawn from the territory and from the language: the Mediterranean scrub, the brown of the chestnut, the bitter Maremma. The graphic project starts here.
Every beer has its creature, and every creature stands rampant, as on a coat of arms. The reference is heraldic, and it carries what heraldry always carries: belonging to a place, to a history, to a family. The figures are drawn as solid silhouettes, with a grainy texture that dirties them and gives them substance, far from the cleanness of digital illustration.
The bestiary holds the fantastical and the territory together. There are imaginary creatures and woodland animals, and none resembles the others. Anyone buying the same beer twice finds it again by the animal, without reading the name.
