I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram when I came across the call for art: a contest to design limited-release beer labels. The beer was being brewed specially for the concessions stand at the Patricia Reser Performing Arts Center. The call indicated they were looking for designs that represented the Reser Center as well as their partner brewery, Binary Brewing.
Visual design, the arts, beer, and the potential for some tech puns?? Yes, please!! I quickly abandoned my to-do list of Things I Didn’t Particularly Want To Do Anyway and dove in wholeheartedly to the challenge. I started scribbling out various concepts, using some of the Reser’s architectural elements, arts programming, and onsite public art as a starting point. The call allowed for multiple entries, so I figured I’d knock out as many as I could in the week remaining before the deadline.
By the time I submitted my entries, I realized I’d had so much fun doing something entirely outside my typical art practice, that I no longer even cared if I won or not; it was just a fun process coming up and executing as many concepts as possible in a short amount of time. But that internal expectation reset did not prevent me from totally losing my mind with excitement when I got the phone call saying I had been selected as one of the winners! Not only did they pick one of my entries, they even got the various layers of cryptic meaning I had incorporated. I had sort of assumed that since it was a blind jury review where I wouldn’t be able to explain anything, that it might be too obscure. But my research and weird nerdery paid off—hurrah!
If you can figure it the meaning behind the design, let me know and I’ll buy you a beer!
