Stone IPA Saves the Day

COVID19 has turned everyone’s world upside down. At the start of 2020 it was bad enough that impeachment came and went and Colonel Von Clorox the Orange-Faced Bleach Clown was still POTUS (sigh!) I’m sure those of us who don’t get our info and political opinions from YouTube conspiracy videos about deep-state QAnon pizza babies, Kermit the Frog sipping tea memes, and Grumpy Cat gifs about George Soros, didn’t think things could get much worse!

Then came COVID19 and with it came people very close to me getting ill, heartbreaking COVID deaths, furloughs, layoffs, riots in the streets, seclusion, and we all collectively realized that things could get worse, much worse! And it wasn’t just the “big things” that were hard to deal with. Being stuck indoors for such long periods of time, looking for ways to fill the quarantine hole that didn’t involve binge-watching the Office again were really getting to me. Luckily, I managed to find some design projects to help patch up the cracks in this new reality and to get me through the depression.

The best of these projects started as a Stone Brewing “call-for-artists” social post that they posted just before the outbreak. It called for artists to submit their artwork of the Stone Brewing Gargoyle that we all know and love. I thought to myself, “I’m an artist! I love Stone beer! I love the Gargoyle! I’ll send them something!” So I did. After some initial sketching, I hit upon the idea of the Stone Gargoyle as a “suave”, “modern” and “debonair” character that I think sums up the Stone brand as a whole; the types of sophisticated beer they brew, the type of person who likes to drink Stone beer, and the people behind the brand that have always seemed much cooler than most other breweries.

So I did and lo-and-behold, about a month later I was sending emails back-and-forth with Greg Koch, the Beer Jesus himself. In fact the first email I got from him, I was in bed, it was really late, and I was struggling to sleep. I opened the email and sat bolt-upright in bed before shaking my misses awake to tell her that I was now talking to Greg Koch about a design of mine being put on a beer can (she was about as happy as someone could be who’d just been shaken awake in the middle-of-the-night and almost given a heart-attack.) Since this conversation, I’ve pretty much told everyone that me and Greg are now best buddies (I’m sure this is news to him but it’s certainly true in my overactive imagination.)

News that my design would be part of the Stone IPA Guest Art Series and put on a can that would sit in fridges across the nation honestly got me through a bad time and “saved the day”. The day that they FedEx’d me a box with my can designs on was the happiest I’d been in months. My wife and I celebrated by drinking the cans in the hot tub and raising them to Greg (first name terms now, obviously) and Stone Brewing.

It was also absolutely brilliant to see my design get such great reception from Stone fans on Instagram and Facebook. Maybe it’ll be on a t-shirt next? Whatever happens next with this project and design, I was thrilled to be a part of it and to have this great experience. Even when things are not great in the world, it’s moments like these, when I cracked open a Stone IPA can with my own design on it, that make the tough times bearable. It’s possible that I might not look back on 2020 with such sadness!

• Go to Stone Brewing to see all their fantastic beers and if you like the artwork on this post, contact me for art, design and illustration projects.