Brewing and distributing beer has evolved dramatically. As one of the oldest libations made, the flavor, consistency and styles of beer have been mastered and sometimes changed. Following the beer, brewery branding has changed, too. The symbols breweries use to tell their stories has transformed, along with the vessels used for distribution. A Ballard author has documented these changes his book, “Oh Beautiful Beer: The Evolution of Craft Beer and Design.”

Author Harvey Shepard has been living in Ballard for the past two years. He is originally from Massachusetts and works as a graphic designer. Shepard started a blog in 2011 called, “Oh Beautiful Beer,” devoted to celebrating the evolution of design in the craft beer industry. Since then he was written over 750 posts. What he didn’t know then was that his blog posts would soon become a book.

“It started out as kind of a goofy project,” said Shepard. “But I wanted to put together some topics that designers would be into and regular people would be in to, and then I thought beer makes a lot of sense — beer labels. So I started putting a pile of labels together for blog posts, and I got way, way too into it.”

An editor with Countryman Press, who happens to be a home brewer, was a fan of Shepard’s blog and approached him with the idea of turning the blog into a book. Shepard had just four months to organize and draft an over 200-page manuscript, and was able to produce it because of the large body of work he had already written.

In his study of labels and vessels, Shepard covers a broad range of breweries and documents breweries as far away as Sweden and Australia. He also included Ballard brewery, Hilliard’s Beer, along with four other Washington breweries, such as Churchkey, No-Li (Spokane), Holy Mountain (Seattle) and Dru Bru (Snoqualmie Pass).

Shepard explained how Hilliard’s logo is designed simply and uses traditional black letter type and chevron. He said that the design elements they use help tell Hilliard’s story of making quality, traditional style beers, while paying homage to the past.

“I love simple design. I think so many brewers and labels get so complicated, and you get to the shelf and you can’t figure who the brewer is and what the style of the beer is. There is just so much going on. I love minimal style. … I’m obviously biased, but if I see a really sharp, well designed, nice looking label, it makes me feel like whatever is inside that bottle also had that much attention and detail.”

The book starts at the very beginning of beer consumption and notes that beer has been consumed for thousands of years out of many different vessels made from things like leather, wood and silver. Shepard moves on to cover the onset of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. and the technological advancement of the era, when branding really started to be emphasized by breweries. During that time people started drinking at home more, and as a result people started taking grog home in growlers. Shepard reports that growlers used to be simple galvanized steel buckets that patrons -- even children -- would have filled in a process called “rushing the growler.” According to Shepard, the name “growler,” is said to be from either the sound the carbon dioxide released from the beer, or from the heckling and banter between barkeeps and patrons about how much beer constitutes a full pour.

Shepard goes further to cover packaging and discusses how owners started thinking about portable vessels: bottles and cans. After growlers, eventually beer was distributed in bottles and then canning beer became the norm thanks to Krueger Brewing Company, the first brewery to can beer in 1935. With canning, the evolution if distributing beer changed dramatically into a proliferation of many sizes, shapes and label expressions.

Another aspect Shepard features in his book is the revival of some old style vessels. Some breweries celebrate the past by using older vessels like swing-top ceramic jugs and flattop cans. Churchkey, a Seattle brewery, is one brewery that has revived the flattop can. The can needs a church key to be opened. The flattop was the original Krueger can and remained the standard vessel until the pull-tab can hit the market. Shepard said that breweries like Churchkey distinguish their beer from all the rest on store shelves by using throwback vessels from the past.

“There’s always a story behind the brewery and something that makes them unique in such a crowded marketplace.”

Shepard’s book is available at Secret Garden Books in Ballard and Barnes and Noble, or visit his blog at http://www.ohbeautifulbeer.com