Posted under: 
Guinness – Great Drink, Great Advertising Design
Today is Arthurs Day – the 250th anniversary of Arthur Guinness making the first pint of Guinness here in Dublin. My Dad, Grandad and Great Grandad all worked as coopers for Guinness, a trade which unfortunately has nearly disappeared. So apart from loving the drink itself, I feel a strong affinity with the brewery off James’s Street. There’s Guinness in the Farley blood.
Looking at Guinness from a design point of view, they’ve always had great ads. The very first advertisement appeared in the columns of the Daily Mail on 6 February 1929 with the statement: "This is the first advertisement ever issued in a national paper to advertise Guinness." It was seen as an act of near desperation.
S H Benson was the advertising agency that brought together the slogan, Guinness Is Good For You and the beautiful drawings by John M Gilroy, their in-house artist. Gilroy’s first Guinness poster was produced in 1930 and he went on to create more than 100 press ads and 50 poster designs for Guinness. Some of his best known work includes the girder Carrier and the wood cutter advertising “Guinness For Strength”. Typography fans might be interested to know that Gilroy used the same typeface the whole way through his career. This was in the day before many companies became as brand aware as they are today.
Image Credit: Guinntiques.
Guinness Is Good For You (In Irish)
After SH Benson, Guinness worked with only five other advertising agencies including Ogilvy. Here’s a big mish mash of some of their creative and humourous print work.
Hmmm, I suspect this one could be false advertising… I thought Guinness was about 5000 calories per pint.
The poster below was created for the GAA championships and my impressive claim to fame here is, I know the owner of this head. My friend’s brother had the shape of the ball shaved and dyed into head for the ad.
Guinness and the advertising agencies have produced excellent TV ads, my favourite being this;
And finally, years ago, when I first joined Worth1000, my first ever contest entry was this one:
Happy Arthurs Day All!
8 Comments + Add Comment
Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!
Follow Me On Twitter
Art Prints For Sale
Recent Comments
- Evelyn Yap on Photoshop Tutorial: How To Create An Action To Watermark Your Images
- pk on Photoshop Tip: Quick Tracking and Kerning of Text
- Photoshop Fun: Making Toy Models of Italian Trip Photos | CreepyStock on How To Create The Tilt Shift Toy Model Look With Your Photographs In Photoshop
- Lindsay on Creating speech bubbles in Photoshop using the Custom Shape Tool
- Smo on Creating speech bubbles in Photoshop using the Custom Shape Tool
Gallery
*LOL* Yours is the best!
.-= Heather T.´s last blog ..Pixel Canvas is ONE! =-.
Thanks Heather. Maybe Guinness will hire me for a future campaign?
cool job! thats great..congratulation!
.-= i-day´s last blog ..an exploration of the process behind graphic design (video tutorial) =-.
What an inspiring collection… The absolut black stuff one is a great take on the classic vodka adverts, great stuff…
.-= Andrew Kelsall´s last blog ..Case Study: Identity, Branding and Signage for St Luke’s Church =-.
Slightly out on the Guinness font, but love the w1000 entry apart from that
lol awesome, I wish I could get some of them as postcards to put on my fridge !
.-= Lorene Rencontre´s last blog ..Eviter les disputes, c’est dur ! =-.
Thanks for that! I remember seeing some of this wonderful graphic design and printing when I visited the Guinness brewery in Dublin a few years ago. I would recommend it to anyone.
I love guinness advertising. I wore a my goodness my guinness tshirt around for about 3 years when I was in my teens not knowing it was about a beer. It really is classic and thats what great advertising is about!
I also love the more recent guinness advertisement with the hands.
What an inspiration… sigh