Widmer Brewing 30 Beers for 30 Years (detail)

See the full project at :
https://www.behance.net/timweakland

I was approached by Widmer Brothers Brewing to be part of their 30th anniversary celebration. For those outside Portland, Widmer is the grand daddy of microbrewing in the Pacific Northwest and makes some of the best beer on this planet.

The 30 Beers for 30 Years Series is a unique celebration of the 30th Anniversary. Beginning in April of 2014, the month Widmer Brothers was founded in 1984, the brewery began realeasing 30 small batch beers, each brewed to commemorate a specific year and beer in the brewery's 30-year history. These beers are some of the most memorable, innovative or otherwise important beers in the brewery's history and will be released through April 2015.

The brewery tapped some of Portland's best creative talent for the 30 Beers for 30 Years label designs. Thirty different local artists and designers created label art for the beers in this series based on their interpretations of the beer, making for a unique look at the past 30 years of Widmer Brothers Brewing. The artwork and information about each beer will be revealed as each beer is released throughout the year.

There was an open sign-up, first come first served, to pick out your year and beer. I jumped on 1985 as it was a huge part of my childhood. I went into the project hoping I could work in some 80's homages. '85 happened to be the year Nintendo was released in the US and I couldn't pass it up. I learned a little backstory on this beer having been brought over to the states from Germany after one of the Widmer Brothers shadowed a master brewer in Dusseldorf Germany I got into the idea of transportation, in a nintendo world and the Super Mario Bros. warp tunnels were a natural fit. The 8-bit style, and Widmer Bros/Mario Bros quickly took shape. I tossed the whole design into some obnoxious mid '80s pinks and the label was born. The final step was screenprinting these bad boys onto 22's and finding the bottles all over town.