Beer & design

The best thing about holidays and traveling is having a change of scenery: whether it’s architecture, the scenery or food, everything’s different. Often, a supermarket is the best place to start exploring: what products does it sell, and what new, interesting fruit and vegetables are on the shelves? And if, like us, you're a trademark attorney − which brands does it stock, and what do the products look like? We can't help ourselves, it's what being in this profession does to you.

This is how we discovered that in South Korea, beer design has gone wild. Beer companies here don’t go in for boring cans, with a big brand name on the front. To stand out in South Korea, you really have to up your design game.

We saw purple cans depicting a fish, yellow cans festooned with red flowers or a drawing of a woman The brighter, the better!

It seems that the more competitive the market, the harder trademark owners have to work to stand out from the crowd. This leads to some great design. The supermarket shelves in the Netherlands would be a lot more colourful if manufacturers would follow this example!