Have I mentioned how much I love my town? Of all the coolness my friends are doing and making, one of the ones that makes this 100,000-person town feel even bigger* is the amazing city magazine that launched barely a year ago.

Recently, I was asked to participate in The Lakelander‘s special craft beer issue. With rumors (and construction) all abuzz surrounding our fair city’s budding craft beer scene, Contributing Editor (and Polk Museum of Art Curator) Adam Justice asked a handful of local artists and designers to name and design a label for specific brew from a theoretical hometown brewery.

I was tasked with branding a locally-made porter and, after much brainstorming and revisiting of local history, chose to name mine the Wire Lake Porter. This connected the porter’s apocryphal railroad roots and its dark color and with the earliest local railworkers‘ quarters near the dark waters of Wire Lake (now known as Lake Wire – for the telegraph cable that ran straight across it).

While most of my colleagues on this project are formally trained artists and designers with beautiful, elaborate styles, I knew my clean and simple style would be best highlighted the way much of my work is: as a highly textural letterpress print. You can get a full view of the label in my portfolio.

I’m thrilled to release this fun little project into the world and welcome any beer makers to discuss adding a highly-tactile letterpress label to their craft(s). In high quantities, labels can be quite affordable.

The other artists included in this project are:

• Author/Illustrator Fred Koehler
• Creative Manager for Publix Creative Services Brian Chambers
• Florida Southern College professor Eric Blackmore
• Freelance Designer Gretchen Wood
• Madden Brand Agency Creative Director Allen Reed
• Caricaturist Dennis Hart
• Designers Liz Chinchilla and Sean Hults (Sean inked my fountain pen tattoo)

*I know 100,000 is a fairly large city, but not when you’re not a suburb. As the city Tampa and Orlando love and hate to claim, we’re here on our own in the middle of this strange state.