Monday 9 June 2008

Cyclops - Why?


I notice that the world of real ale often demonstrates an inability to appreciate what the "outside world" may think of it.

Real ale is already saddled with an unappealing "brand image" - bushy beards, woolly jumpers, sandals - need we go on? - yet CAMRA is willing to add to the roster of inelegent and unappealing imagery.

For example: the promotion of "Cyclops" (Ho, ho, ho it's only a larf innit?) - a system of noting an individual beer's colour and appearance, aroma and flavour invented by Everards (if I recall correctly).

Entirely needlessly, the visual representation of this system is an eye, a nose, a mouth.

NOTE - it's one eye. WHY, when most of us have two?

The choice has been made in order to giver it a jokey name - "Cyclops". Although the legend of Cyclops is not known for having any direct relevance to beer, it has been decided to plonk it into real ale imagery.

It wouldn't be so bad if they'd actually employed a decent graphic designer to create the Cyclops image rather than the inept "design" obviously knocked up in a word processor using clip-art.

I can fully understand the need to reduce the amount of guesswork in the selection of a beer by those of us not gifted with encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory but is this the best they can do?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

CAMRA do so often have the germ of a good idea but fail to deliver in the final form. Marketing tends not to be their strong point.
I loath their promotional material that features the 'beer head' photos.