Before I started working with Against the Grain Brewery (Louisville, Kentucky), I worked in advertising and did a lot of client-based work. Some of it wasn’t too creative or fulfilling, so I started doing character work on the side and would sell those drawings at art fairs and markets. I wound up meeting ATG Founder Sam Cruz when he saw one of the illustrations and pulled me aside and mentioned that he was opening a brewery and wanted to know if I’d be interested in doing artwork for the labels.
I said yes, of course, and then heard nothing for a few years until he called me out of the blue and mentioned that the brewery had gotten off the ground. That’s how I got started with them back in 2011.
We decided on six different characters to help focus their six different categories of beer: session, hops, whim, malt, dark, and smoke. We were able to build the brand around those characters. Each style has a story to tell, and we can be creative in that context. We wanted the branding and the packaging to bring the mentality of the brewery to mind, and the characters tie all the beers together. Then the individual beer names have their own story to tell.