Shelf Talker Designs

Just in case you don't know, a shelf talker is a mini-poster of sorts that explains or describes a certain product on a shelf.  In essence it tells you something important you didn't even know you wanted to know.   The most common shelf talkers, for a person like me, are found in a liquor store.  There you will find shelf talkers on the shelf in front of many of the wines, telling you what their Wine Spectator score is.  Well, in the last five years or so more and more beer shelf talkers have been showing up.  The most common shelf talkers are from BeerAdvocate and Rate Beer.  These shelf talkers tell you, among other things, how well that particular beer rated with the sites readers.

I have been developing a shelf talker for my other website/blog HopHeadSaid - in my other writing life I write about beer, commercial or homebrew; food pairings, and beer events not to mention beer reviews. My shelf talker is just a bit different from the other ones because my "ST" isn't rating the beer.  Nope, if my "ST" is on the beer then you know I recommend that beer, my "ST" suggests food pairings for that beer.  No food item or course is off limits.  On any given shelf talker, I may suggest a salad, a cheese or even a desert that will pair well with a given beer.

I worked hard on a design that would incorporate my HopHeadSaid logo and introduce some more elements that I would like to start branding.  I also worked hard to make sure the shelf talker was easy to read and understand.  I thought I had covered all the bases until I took my design into a local beer store.  There I learned of a real world problem with shelf markers.  Many are made to stand up in the portrait position but when they are attached to the shelf they get knocked around and often get pulled off because they extend well past the shelf and get snagged on the bottle that is being pulled off the shelf.

So when I got back home I started redesigning a landscape version of my shelf talker. This new orientation will significantly reduce the overhang of the the shelf talker and reduce the chances of it being knocked to the floor.

Original portrait version.

New landscape version.