TBJ – Chris, I know your passion is in illustration and, in particular, characters for children’s books so how did you and Josh get into working for Weird Beard and how does this partnership between you both work?

CW – Josh and I go way back, we used to work together at design agency AKQA, long before I went full time illustration. We were doing designs for a Fanta website where I was providing drawings and animations and he was doing the design. The partnership worked from the start, so when he moved to another agency and I went freelance with my illustration we just sort of kept it up on a few ‘out of work’ projects.

JS – I met the Weird Beards (Bryan & Gregg) a couple of years ago at a small beer festival at the Strongrooms. I loved their beer, but found their branding, let’s say, ‘a little sucky’. I got in contact with them a little while after that to see if they wanted to work together. We met at a Craft Beer Co to have a chat and really got on. They were looking for a label design for their new brew ‘5’o’clock Shadow’ and they pretty much said “show us what you’ve got”. That’s when I got Chris involved.

CW – That first label was our job interview! Josh already had a good idea of what the label should look like at that point, but really needed some help on the illustration side, especially with the creation of Lup’in, the Weird Beard skull.

TBJ – What was the inspiration for the Weird Beard themes and Lupin. Did you approach the brand with the idea of consistency and a “universe” of different Lupin styles defining (or defined by) each beer?

CW – I think I enjoy the homage Lup’ins the most. The Weird Beards already had their little skull character when we met them – he was part of their logo, but rather crudely drawn at that point, sporting a beard very reminiscent of Bryan’s own beard at the time. We’d suggested the idea of bringing a different style skull to each label and they loved the idea.

Their inspiration for Lup’in was Eddie the Head – the Iron Maiden mascot. Just as Eddie made an appearance of every Iron Maiden album cover, Lup’in would be on every label. It took a few goes to get him right, but once we had that ‘base’ Lup’in everything just started working. They loved the first label – a cowboy theme, (Gregg even took to wearing a cowboy hat after that) and we were asked to design the whole core range.

Josh took the design of the first label and created a template that we’re still using to this day. Each new label gets a new Lup’in and a new typographic treatment. I do the skulls and Josh does the type.

We get free rein on how each treatment will look, most of the time we just get sent the name of the new brew and it’s up to us to create the concept. Our surrounding template is so strong that we can really go to town on the brew typography and it still feels on brand. I’ve been pushing some pretty freaky Lup’ins recently and Josh had been doing some amazing type – the later labels are definitely our best. I really like ‘Holy Hoppin’ Hell’ and it’s subsequent partner Brews – ‘Sorachi Faceplant’ and ‘Defacer’.

JS – ‘Smoke’ and ‘Fire’ are my favourites. We went all out with those.