Guest post from my dad:

Announcing: Beer Label Competition
Open to all Shamboteers.
Maximum three entries per person.
Deadline March 15th, 2007
Must be 21 on receipt of prize.

Homebrewers need inspiration. Also, they are very bad at/lazy about
making labels. I plan to take all entries to the Homebrew  Club meeting on March 17th
to be judged by the members of the club. There will be at least one
winner. The winner’s label will be the inspiration for a beer that I
will brew. The prize is twelve bottles of that beer. Depending on their
interest in doing so, other members of the club may choose a label, brew
a beer, and surrender twelve bottles to the label’s designer. So there
could be several winners.

note: it will take a while for the beer to be produced and the prize
delivered.

Size: up to about 3.5″ high and 4″ wide. But you can be pretty flexible.
Just so it fits on a regular long neck bottle. I can deal with just
about any file format. If it’s all bitmap, a jpg of sufficiently high
resolution will be fine. If it includes vector elements, a psd file or
an illustrator file or pdf would probably be best.

Every home brewer has beer styles that they prefer to make, but most
are eager to experiment. I tend to prefer making stouts, porters, IPA’s
and pale ales, and rarely make lagers. Other members of the homebrew
club have different preferences. You can find a list of beer styles at
beeradvocate.com. Many of these styles are rare and or obscure. You
probably won’t find a taker for Apricot Rye Lambic (though it does sound
tasty). I would be happy to provide advice (through the comments)
regarding beer names or concepts. If you want to play it safe you can be
rather non-specific as regards beer style or descriptors. For example,
Whiny Puppy Ale could be a great name and generate a fun label. And the
brewer could make just about any ale to go in that bottle.
let’s get art’n!