Talking The Art Of Beer Labels with Indiana City Brewing’s Aaron Scamihorn

It’s one thing for a beer to have great taste. It’s a whole other story for it to have great label art.

With this in mind, Seth Johnson caught up with Indiana City Brewing designer Aaron Scamihorn, who uses his artistic background to make beer labels that truly catch the eye. Read their interview below.

Seth Johnson: Give me a little bit of background on yourself as an artist.

Aaron Scamihorn: I’ve been doing digital design for about 12 or 13 years. I started doing a lot of screen-printing because I was a big fan of the music scene. I was doing gig posters and playing in some bands. I eventually got some cool [concert poster] jobs from Cake, Queens of the Stone Age, Dropkick Murphys, Arctic Monkeys and some bands that I’m a big fan of. So that really opened up the idea of a process that was a little more handmade.

I was printing in the basement of Lodge Design, which is an agency just west of here on Washington Street. Ray Kamstra, the owner of Indiana City, was a web designer/contract developer, and he was doing some work with them out there. My wife is an account manager there, and she said that he was bringing in his home brews to work. She’s not a stout drinker, but he made a stout, which is now either Mimi’s Tabernacle or Mimi’s Breakfast Stout. She was like, “I loved it. It was amazing.” So I was super pumped to try it.

Then, he [Ray] started the Kickstarter and reached out to me, saying he had seen my work since I was working in the basement there. He was like, “Hey. Let’s do something for these first three brews that we’re going to start with,” and that’s what started it all.

SJ: When you started doing design work for Indiana City, what were some of the things they gave you as inspiration?

The other big push for me is that Ray specifically focuses on producing big, full-flavored beers. So I want to make the art as epic as I see the beer being. In this industry, there are so many home brewers popping up with their first brewery that they’re often having their wife or nephew or some cousin produce the art for them, and it often results in some kind of generic, basic, boring artwork. Or, it’s just not really well designed. I really want to try to help elevate some of that to be as legit as the beer is.

SJ: Walk me through your design process.

AS: I wish that every time I did art for a beer that I had had the time to taste it first, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. It’s like, “Hey. We’re getting ready to release this beer for the first time. We need to have art ready so that it can go into bottles right away and be on shelves.” But, Ray talks to me every time about what the style is, what the thoughts are behind it, and if he has any ideas in terms of naming. Even if it’s a super random name, we try to make sure there’s some sort of story to it. So it’s usually like, “Here’s the style, and here’s an idea of what we’re about with the approach.” And then, I start in with an idea, and then we go to sketches and then to design and then to print.