When you put your blood, sweat, and tears into your passion project, you have to make concessions into the commercial aspects of production. What I love about Omnipollo in Sweden is they put the art of the product first. By brewer Henok Fentie’s own admission, sometimes the ingredients they use don’t scale in an economical fashion. The labeling is anything but traditional. They craft art. “Omnipollo is a nomadic craft brewery founded by myself and brewer Henok Fentie. We conceive our recipes at home and travel to different breweries across the globe to craft our ales.”
Inspired by a two recent posts on Oh Beautiful Beer featuring Nebuchadnezzar and Näcken as well as The Beer Temple’s Episode 221, I couldn’t resist reaching out to the artist of the brewery’s roughly 20 labels (at the time of this writing), Karl Grandin.
“Omnipollo is also an imaginary world that is developing with each bottle. Most of the Omnipollo images are about transforming and distorting the meaning of symbols and other popular references.”
My favorite labels by Karl are the ones that break out of the standard square label picture plane – the keyhole shape of Leon, the lamp shape of Agamemnon and the candle on Mazarin.
Buy Omnipollo Beer on CraftshackAbout Karl
“I was born next to a mountain in Stockholm on Christmas Day 1976 and was raised on a healthy diet of Marvel Comics, Hieronymus Bosch and Fritz The Cat,” says Grandin. “I work in a wide range of media and my images tend to find their way to book and album covers, bottles, textiles, posters, canvases and walls.”
“I like visual clichés but try to stretch and turn them into something new, give them new sense and logic. I hope my work to be simultaneously clear and abstract.”
Grandin is also a co-founder of cult fashion label Cheap Monday and part of the Swedish design team Vår. He co-wrote a book about homebrewing with Fentie (with whom he collaborates on Omnipollo’s recipes) entitled Brygg öl.
Karl Grandin’s Website
Omnipollo on Facebook
Karl Grandin’s Artwork for sale
The Woo Shop
