Category Archives: design

Inside the Pub, 1950

Detail from an illustration by Gordon Cullen.

One of Gordon Cullen’s illustrations depicting an ideal modern pub.

Maurice Gorham’s best-known books on pubs are The Local (1939) and Return to the Local (1949), neither of which we have yet read. What we did acquire, thanks to a tip from Herb Lester, was a battered copy of Inside the Pub (1950), a pub designer’s manual which Gorham wrote with Harding McGregor (‘H. McG.’) Dunnet for the Architectural Press.

It’s an interesting book for various reasons but what leapt out at us were the opening lines of the introduction by J.M. Richards, on the subject of the alchemy of pub atmosphere:

If I were asked what are the qualities I would like to find in a pub I would say simply, ‘the right atmosphere’, and if asked to be a little more precise I would say that the right atmosphere is one which provides warmth, cheerfulness and a sense of seclusion and one in which the charm of the familiar is somehow combined with a sense of something intriguing just round the corner. A pub should make people feel at home and yet have the capacity to lift them a little out of themselves.

Later in the book, Dunnet says that many pubs built just before the war suffer from the lack of nooks and dividers, offering only a ‘large bleak interior’; they are sometimes ‘indistinguishable from post offices or banks’; they ‘deny the whole pub tradition and only succeed in discouraging the customer from joining his cronies round the kitchen chimney corner’.

We can think of a few pubs to which that description would apply.

The Power of a Good Pumpclip

Magic Rock brewing pumpclip

When we went to the Craft Beer Company with a not-especially-beery mate last week, we got to see the power of branding in action.

Faced with a vast array of pumps, slightly anxious at too much choice, and aware of the queue behind him, our chum made a snap decision: he went for Magic Rock Curious. Why? Because the design stood out as professional, stylish and interesting. Because it leapt off the bartop shouting: “Buy me!”

Sadly, there was none left, and he had to settle for another beer suggested by the barmaid. As it turned out, it was every bit as nice as Curious, but we’d never have known that if left to our own devices, because its pumpclip looked like something from an A level art portfolio c.2002 – Photoshop for Dummies, posterise-everything amateur hour.

Design can’t be an afterthought, because, in the current competititve climate, it can mean the difference between a beer either selling briskly or quietly turning to vinegar in its cask. We punters — especially those of us who simply drink beer rather than obsessing over it — are fickle, superficial, shallow creatures.

More Visuals: Beer Family Trees?

Extract from the Thornbridge Family Tree

Detail from the Thornbridge Family Tree (PDF link below)

After the more theoretical graphs and charts of the last couple of days (which required all our reserves of bullshit to navigate), today’s experiment is in an altogether woolier mode.

Pete Frame is rightly revered for his Rock Family Trees — vast, sprawling, beautifully hand-scripted charts showing the movement of bass, keytar and Moog players from one band to another, or within particular ‘movements’. This approach doesn’t just work for bands, though — Frame also used it to map the Monty Python crew, hangers on and chums.

Inspired by his approach, we’ve come up with a chart showing the comings and goings of brewers at Thornbridge (PDF, 76kb) and its place in British craft brewing in the last seven years. Is it helpful? Does it help makes sense of the connections between breweries? We think it does, actually — it highlights Italian and Antipodean connections; and not entirely surprising links between Meantime Brewing, Marble, Dark Star, Brewdog and Thornbridge.

But now we’d really like to see an even bigger version covering more breweries. (Narrated by the late John Peel.)

Notes

  1. We chose Thornbridge because they seem to have a revolving door, with people coming and going as often as members of Morrissey’s backing band and
  2. because they’re fairly open about who’s arrived and who’s leaving.
  3. With only their blog, press releases and Wikipedia for reference, we’ve probably made some mistakes — sorry in advance! We’re happy to fix them, but it’s the approach we’re really testing here.
  4. If you work at any of the breweries pictured, you’re probably feeling weirded out right now. Sorry. If it’s any comfort, at least you know how Peter Hook felt when he saw this.
  5. Updates: 09:45, 03/05/2012 — added James Kemp; changed David Pickering qualifications to mention Heriot-Watt; corrected spelling of ‘Heriot-Watt’.

Or How About Sparklines for Data?

Sparklines for Whitbread beer production 1902 to 1914

The graphic above shows Ron Pattinson’s Whitbread production data from 1902 too 1914 plotted as ‘sparklines’ using Excel 2010′s built-in function.

Sparklines are small line graphs without scales or labels designed to give a quick visual impression of a trend over time. They’re another Edward Tufte innovation and he apparently describes them as “data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics” — graphs that can be used like elements of type, without the need for plates or “See Fig. 12″.

But is the above graphic illuminating? More so than yesterday’s slopegraph, perhaps, but probably not as much as the traditional line graph below.

Whitbread production 1902 to 1914 as a line graph

Next: the Rock Family Trees approach to understanding the relationships between British breweries.

Slopegraphs to Visualise Beer Data?

Like Alan ‘A Good Beer Blog’ McLeod, we’re keen to see more meaningful attempts to visualise the sea of information that surrounds beer — that is, not just whizzy infographics heavy on the graphics but light on info.

In a recent post, Alan directed us towards the work of visualisation guru Edward Tufte, which led us to this excellent blog post on an early innovation of Tufte’s: ‘slopegraphs’.

So, here’s some of Ron Pattinson’s data, drawn painstakingly from the Whitbread archives, presented as a (crude) slopegraph.

Graph showing Whitbread beer production 1904 to 1914.

First thoughts? Well, it doesn’t show us anything Ron wasn’t able to express better in words (IPA up, Mild declining surprisingly early), but it might be useful to some ‘visual learners‘. And, as Charlie Park points out, aren’t slopegraphs really just rearranged line charts? (They certainly are the way me make ‘em.)

The chart above was created in Excel and exported to a graphics package for formatting and labelling. It uses a consistent scale, hence the big gap in the middle, which is, in itself, illustrative. UPDATED 02/05/2012: removed bounding box — see comments below.

The Big Red Triangle

Bass is better regarded as an icon of graphic design than as a beer.

It’s usually found in pubs that seem stuck in a timewarp and, in our experience at least, is rarely drinkable, from either keg or cask. We’ve found it sour and stale everywhere from grotty pubs with sticky carpets to gaudily wallpapered ‘style bars’ in south London.

A couple of weeks ago, however, we had a pint that was in tip-top condition and were reminded that at its best, Bass is a complex beer which carries some intentional ‘off flavours’ with aplomb. The sulphurous aroma, the hint of cider-apple and a final chalkiness, are not repellent but absolutely harmonious. It is reminiscent of, and better than, recent bottles of Worthington White Shield.

Until it tastes this way more often, however, while we won’t give up on it, it’ll have to remain on our list of beers of last resort.

Simon ‘Reluctant Scooper’ Johnson seems to know where to find Bass in reliably good nick; and those who like to try to find the breaking point of the term craft beer will find Bass a useful bit of ammo.

Smutty pumpclips: no thanks

We wrote this for the head-to-head feature in the most recent issue of CAMRA’s BEER magazine. You can read Simon “Reluctant Scooper” Johnson’s argument in favour of “Ginger Tosser” et al over at his blog. This is the unedited text we sent them with never-seen-before deleted scenes and bloopers a few extra sentences. If this kind of dynamite material doesn’t convince you to join CAMRA just to get the magazine, nothing will…

Smutty pumpclips with badly-rendered ‘busty wenches’ and willy-waving vicars do nobody any favours. They don’t sell beer. They rarely, if ever, make anyone laugh. And, perhaps worst of all, they give the knockers another stick with which to beat beer and those who drink it.

Wine producers don’t market their lovingly crafted, artisanal products this way because they know they deserve to be taken seriously. Nor, for that matter, do German breweries, of any size. Perhaps British ale brewers are naturally self-deprecating?

Smutty pumpclip apologists will say that it is po-faced and middle-class to complain about them (as if the middle-classes have a monopoly on good taste). They will also argue that a ‘wacky’ pumpclip does sell beer. They argue that it grabs attention at the point of sale and so, for minimal outlay, helps the little man stand-up to the giant marketing budgets of the bigger breweries. Yes, the occasional pint of a rudely named beer might sell on novelty value, but that won’t win longer term converts. People watched the Carry On films, for a while, but they didn’t save the British film industry.

The long-term survival of good beer, and especially cask ale, depends on it being accepted as a mainstream product for men and women with discerning taste (like free range meat or good cheese) rather than a niche product for a small number of punning oddballs.

Think about Thornbridge’s pumps and their success in competing for attention on the pub bar. Their simple, colourful, contemporary design stands out from the competition without being the graphic equivalent of Colin Hunt, the attention-seeking office joker from The Fast Show. It doesn’t offend or embarrass anyone and, importantly, appeals to people who might not normally consider drinking ale.

We’re going to put more words into the mouths of those imaginary critics: “This is superficial nonsense! It doesn’t matter what the pumpclip looks like, or what the beer is called, only how it tastes.” But it does matter. Even before we’ve tasted a pint, the way it looks in the glass, its name, provenance and, yes, the image on the pumpclip, are stimulating the pleasure centres of our brains. They say you eat with your eyes and we think the same is true of drinking beer.

Or not. One particular turn off for us is when beers have names that refer to urine. Seriously, who wants to be thinking about wee when they lift that glass to their lips?

Yet more vintage beer mats

Here are four British beer mats from the sixties (or early seventies?).

Two make dubious health claims for their product — Mann’s does you a power of good, while Mackeson’s looks good, tastes good and does good. The retro equivalent of “contains friendly bacteria”, maybe?

And these two are just beautiful. Helvetica ahoy on the Worthington mat? And the Watney’s design is pure Festival of Britain.

Vintage beer mat designs

Rooting through a secondhand bookshop in Penzance this week, we found a box full of old beer mats and couldn’t resist buying a little stack. Many were from now extinct breweries, advertising beers which don’t exist anymore. Their designs are simple but very evocative of another age.

Here are a handful of scans, mostly of British beer mats, but with one excellent German design thrown in as a bonus: you can’t go wrong with any picture of a planet doffing his boater, can you?

Beer mat advertising Devenish No 1 Double Weymouth Stout

Huntsman Draught XXXX -- a dark strong beeer for a glow of warmth

Vintage beer mat promoting DAB (Dortmunder Aktien Brauerei)

The Big Session Comeback Tour

Beer mat from the Hausbrauerei Altstadthof, Nuremberg.

We haven’t taken part in the session for a couple of years, mostly because we found ourselves struggling to fit in an opportunity to, e.g., drink a particular type of beer before it rolled around.

Anyway, it’s time to get back in the saddle so here we are again to talk about the art of beer labels, caps and coasters, for this month’s session hosted by HopHeadSaid.

We have a particular interest in commercial design and illustration and when it relates to beer, all the better. We’ve posted about it on more than one occasion and have been really enjoying this excellent blog about beer branding recently.

The image above is one of our favourite bits of beer-related design and, perhaps not so coincidentally, comes from one of our favourite breweries.

What’s not to like? There’s sans serif typography (we have some sympathy with the Helvetica nerds), a simple colour scheme reflecting the flag of Franconia and an equally simple graphic. All of this reminds us vividly of their pub in Nuremberg and their beers, all of which are also simple, unpretentious and clean.

You’ll note that the image above is a bit rough. It needed some restoration because this beermat, along with a stack of others from Germany, the Czech Republic and Belgium, lives in our kitchen and gets used every day. It’s a little bit of Nuremberg we can enjoy every day. As a result, it is covered in beer stains.

Mind you, that Satan cap art isn’t bad either, and nor are the twin labels for the Brooklyn/Schneider collaborations.