Little Bang Brewing Co’s Face Inverter Citrus Super Sour has been named as the winner of the inaugural GABS Can Design Awards.
The awards saw over 120 breweries nominated, with those designs then going to a public vote among the craft beer community, to narrow it down to a top 10. Those 10 most popular designs were then assessed by a panel of brand and design experts, with Face Inverter coming out on top.
“The most exciting element about the Can Design Awards are that craft beer has its own aesthetic, it’s a sub-culture of design,” said Ben Keenan Founder and Creative Director of The Thought Police and one of the award judges.
“The best designs tell the story of the beer and how to enjoy it, you can tell these designs don’t come out of boardrooms.
“When you walk into a bottle shop, wine is very serious and grown-up but there’s so much fun and character injected into these craft beer cans. These designs are indicative of the time and I bet in future it’s these designs that will be hanging bedroom walls.”
Keenan added: “The winning designs are a creative mash-up of cultural reference from tattoo art and streetwear fashions to cartoon design and modern aesthetics. Little Bang Brewing Co’s winning design takes me back to the skateboard design days of the 80s and 90s and embodies those rebellious times.”
The winning design was created by freelance designer Matt O’Connor and the judges said “it’s safe to say that subtlety was not the brief”.
They added: “Using a digital CMYK printing process for increased versatility, Matt went with a 100 per cent yellow and 100 per cent magenta maximum contrast colour palette to tingle the eyeballs as much as the tongue. Loud, silly, even a little nostalgic and totally on brand for Little Bang Brewing Co.”
The GABS Can Design Awards are supported by Orora Group and Little Bang Brewing takes home the Orora Golden Cam Trophy plus a free set of printing plates for its next print with Orora. In addition the other nine shortlisted breweries receive a product innovation design and manufacture package with Opal Speciality Packaging.