Beck's Bottle Art

As my part time job is bar work I recently noticed new labels on the Becks beer bottles. I had no clue as to why they had done this. Recently deciding to look into this I found a blog post on the Creative Review Website. From a design point of view I think it is a interesting scheme that Beck's is involved in and I think some of the labels I have previously seen are nice. Although speaking from a consumer point of view, upon seeing these bottles myself I was slightly unaware of the brand of beer. This could possibly result in a drop of sales regarding the beer. From a design view I can appreciate why Beck's did this, Unfortunately none design minded people possibly wouldn't appreciate it.

Posted by Creative Review, 24 July 2008, 15:20

From 1st August until Christmas, bottles of Beck's beer were adorned with the work of four emerging artists. This is a new scheme called Beck's Canvas, a collaboration between the German brewery and London's Royal College of Art.

The RCA asked their graduates and students to submit work on the theme of individuality specially for this project and a jury of RCA artists selected the winning artists: Rita Ikonen, Tom Price, Charlotte Bracegirdle and Simon Cunningham.

Of course, Beck's has supported contemporary British art over the years and has previously persuaded artists such as Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin to create label artwork for limited edition bottles. However, this year Beck's Canvas will be mass producing and distributing a whopping 27 million of the special bottles - making this one of the largest ever public art commissions.

In fact, the combined area of 27 million Beck's beer bottle labels (143,100 square metres) is greater than the floorspace of The National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art and The Louvre combined. That's about the size of 260 Cistine Chapel ceilings. Or, any sports fans reading, 35 football pitches.