DC Brau / Union – “Yonder Cities” – Packaging – 2017

I recently teamed up with the fine folks at DC Brau (Washington DC) & Union Craft Brewing (Baltimore, MD) to create the artwork for their new collaborative beer, YONDER CITIES. It was first brewed 5 years ago but with the 6th Anniversary of DC Brau this week as well as the Craft Beer Conference 2017 in DC, the decision was made to re-brew it with a suped up new can.

Each brewery has a separate design and will be releasing their own blacklight-responsive, can with invertible artwork. That’s right… BLACKLIGHT BABY!!!

The name “Yonder Cities” represents the neighboring hometowns of each brewery, Baltimore & DC and the friendship that started 5 years ago and was the impetus for the initial concept art. Each brewery was to get their own design, not only to utilize their individual lines of distribution and get the beer out as far as possible but also so the design could best represent their specific hometown.

I have always loved reversible artwork and thought it would not only be be eye-catching on a beer can but a fun challenge to create something you didn’t necessarily know had another hidden image in it until you flipped it upside to take a sip.

Concepts initially took the form of more of a “playing card” layout, eventually settling on trippy masked faces with cityscapes atop them. The can for Union would have more of a nautical theme thus the “Space Captain” was born,.. with the “Space Jester” landing on the can for DC Brau. As the concepts got trippier & trippier we decided to try and make it blacklight responsive to really made this can design stand out.

To celebrate the new can I created a set of blacklight screenprinted posters (18′ x 24′) to be released around the same time. To find out more about these prints and their availability check my write up about them in my blog.

YONDER CITIES is a Farmhouse IPA – “Where tropical hops meet tripped-out, funky farmhouse esters in this incredibly delicious and drinkable”. brew. Cans are currently available at each brewery and through a few distributors in the VA-MD-DC area.

Click the photo above to read a nice write up on DC Brau’s collaboration cans this year by Brightest Young Things…

UPDATE – Oct. 2019

In September of 2019 Union Craft Brewing brought back Yonder Cities & the “Space Captain” with an updated recipe, a Norwegian Farmhouse IPA and with it new packaging. The color palette was changed to match that of the Norwegian flag and a limited edition run of reversible pins were made.