Oh Beautiful Beer by Harvey Shepard is a fitting title for the excellent design on the pages inside. Each and every page has a very well executed design on a bottle label, on the bottle itself or on a can.
The main strength of the book is the hardest. Which labels to pick and which do not make the cut, surprisingly, there are many pages of beers that I either never drunk or have never heard of before. I appreciated that many of the examples were from outside of the US. Beer geeks get a little too U.S. centered at times and it is refreshing to see how design and packaging is done out of our little bubble.
This type of book lives and dies on the photography and layout. On this aspect, Shephard has fully delivered. The photos are crisp and clear and take in all the angles of this 3D art form.
I do wish that the book was bigger. That is probably an economic choice but even after lingering on the many details of certain pages, I was done with the book far too quickly. If more photos could not be included, I would have liked to see more opinion and discussion of each label. My biggest letdown in the book was that there would be a two page spread of a really interesting design and no words about it other than the design house.
I would like to also have seen a little bit of information on the governmental restrictions of labels and how design can be used to overcome regulatory handcuffs.
If you want to see if you like the book before purchasing, you should check out Shepard’s blog from whence this book sprang.