Can You Judge a Beer By Its Label?

Yes, in the case of Somerville-based brewers Pretty Things, as husband-and-wife team Dann and Martha Paquette work just as hard on their artwork as they do on their stellar beer. “There have probably been times where we’ve wanted to make the label so much that we come up with the beer to fit it,” Martha says. This journey through the Pretty Things archives shows how the labels for two of their most popular beers were born.

Photograph by Toan Trinh

Whenever the couple drift from their vision, they come back to this sketch by Dann, from 2007.

Photograph by Toan Trinh

This dapper bunny is the main character on the label for Fluffy White Rabbits, a “hoppy” tripel (get it?). “We came up with the name first, then we came up with the concept of the label,” Martha says.

Photograph by Toan Trinh

Dann drew the original version of the Jack D’Or label in the summer of 2008. Jack, a mustachioed grain of barley, was ­designed to be “out in the woods, sort of summoning himself into beer,” Martha says. “We feel like Jack D’Or actually lives somewhere out in the woods. That’s how real he is to us.”

The mash tun and flower were drawn on paper, cut out, and then scanned to create the final label at right. “We’ve come a long way—we used to go to my [day] job and use the scanner there,” Martha says. “But now we just use our phones to take a picture and then put it into Photoshop and play around with it.”

Check out all of our Top Breweries in New England coverage.