The Evolution of Our Logo

The society’s logo first appeared in 1972 some 14 years after our foundation and was designed by one of our members Ian Cowan. Ian was a graphic artist by profession and is probably most remembered for his collaboration on “Yellow Submarine” the 1968 Beatles animated film. It’s rumoured that he even appeared in it briefly, drawn as a character in a trench coat and a bowler hat!

Ian was undoubtedly a prolific collector, not just of beer labels but also butterflies, vintage bicycles, posters, post boxes, ceramic brewery signs & pub plaques and latterly even London taxis! He said that the original logo (1) was intended to reflect traditional Victorian oval beer label designs and had been based loosely on Almonds Dinner Ale (2). In the 1990s our secretary, Dale Adams, created an alternative design (3) which was used on letterheads and Label of the Year communications. With the development of a new website in 2022 the time seemed right to harmonise the logo on print and online media so a new version was designed, more closely based on the Almonds label and this is available in full colour (4), greyscale (5) and outline (6) variants for letterheads. It’s only a brief tale but nevertheless part of our story.