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Growlers VS. Crowlers: What’s the Difference?

What is a growler? If you’re a beer aficionado, you’ve heard of the growler. Growlers are airtight glass, steel or ceramic jugs that provide patrons with a portable, refillable vessel that can be filled up with draft beer at your favorite craft brewery and taken on the go. As the name might suggest, growlers are quite large in size and can transport a lot of beer—64 ounces, to be exact, or a little more than five bottles of beer—while half growlers (called howlers) can hold a respectable 32 ounces. Some herald growlers and howlers as a more mobile flavor-keeping keg. Indeed, what a time to be alive!

So, what can make the new age of beer transport even better? In comes the crowler. But what is a crowler of beer? It’s the half growler’s aluminum twin. If you haven’t seen a 32-ounce crowler can of beer yet, you will – and you will love it. However, is one portable beer vessel a better option than the other? Both crowlers and growlers have their perks, so keep reading to find out which may be the better fit for your needs.

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5 Hot Foil Label Designs We Love

One of the things we love most about our job is that we work directly with some of America’s best packaging designers. The most successful projects are a collaborative effort between the brand owners, designers, and packaging vendors to make products that capture the customer’s interest and imagination. These projects use a variety of decoration techniques like embossing, spot varnishes, and screen printing to achieve a high level of complexity and depth.

Of all the decoration techniques, hot foil stamping stands out as the most effective. At a relatively low cost per piece, gold, silver, and other types of foils can be used to create outstanding, multifaceted compositions very economically. We’ve compiled five hot foil label projects that we had a lot of fun working on to demonstrate the versatility of foil stamping, especially when used in combination with digital printing.

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Craft Beer In Cans: An Image Transformation

In case you haven’t noticed, the beer can, once viewed as a conduit for volume drinking, house parties and drinking games, is undergoing an image transformation. In recent years, craft brewers have begun embracing the can’s many advantages, elevating its once lowly status to trendy and hip. In fact, according to Russ Phillips from CraftCans.com, the number of craft breweries putting their beer in cans has more than doubled since 2012.

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Evaluating Your Label Amidst a Growing Craft Beer Market

If you have noticed an uptick of competition in the craft beer aisle of your local beer distributor, you are certainly not imagining anything. According to a recent report from the Brewers Association, the craft beer market experienced a record setting year in 2014, successfully grabbing 11 percent share of the overall market.

From a high-level perspective, this is great news for craft brewers. Americans have outgrown the traditional light lager, and are openly embracing the wide array of taste and sophistication the craft beer market has to offer.

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Craft Beer Label Trends to Keep an Eye On

Those who specialize in the craft of beer label design and printing understand just how large a role the label plays in establishing market share. A quality, eye-catching label, one that stands out on the crowded shelves, can give the craft brewer the edge needed to win the battle taking place in the beer aisle.

To help you remain ahead of your competition, we thought we would take a moment to review a few of the label design trends shaping the landscape.
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Antique Beer Bottles We Love

When building the vision for your unique beer bottles, you can learn a lot from what’s been done in the past. If you want a vintage look for your craft beer, antique beer bottles like these can inspire your design. And as mentioned in a previous blog post, it’s not just the label that can set your beverage apart from others. It’s the container type, too.

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Finding the Perfect Match: Beer Container Types and Cool Beer Labels

Think beer labels are only good for traditional beer bottles? Think again. From growlers and bombers to different sized beer cans, beer labels make the perfect addition. Here at Blue Label Packaging Company, we have experience designing and creating bottle labels for a variety of shapes and sizes.

It’s not just the label that can set a beverage apart from others. It’s the container type, too. Take a look at some of our favorite beer storage containers below:

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Weighing the Pros and Cons of Beer Canning

Should you switch to canning your beer? If you do, how will it affect the look and feel of your product, including your beer labels? We’re here to help.

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3 Traits of Great Beer Bottle Labels

There are a lot of ways to design great beer bottle labels. Label designs in craft brewing are much like the beers themselves, innovative, eccentric, bold, and endlessly original. In our line of work, we happen to encounter a lot of great custom beer labels; this article talks about three things that a lot of great labels have in common.

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