The third time was indeed the charm for the design team and owner Art Oestrike at Jackie O’s Brewery. The Athens, Ohio, company recently celebrated their victory for winning the fifth annual Colored by INX Can Design contest. The design entry for Mystic Mama West Coast Style IPA won the popular vote, determined by five independent judges and the public through INX International’s Facebook and LinkedIn social media pages.

“We are honored to receive this award. It speaks volumes to the amount of hard work and effort it takes from design, production, and implementation of all these wonderful skills,” said Oestrike. ‘This beautiful package celebrates the life of a wonderful woman whose life was cut too short, so it truly is an honor to work with such artistic and hard-working people.”

The woman he mentioned was his mother, Jackie Oestrike. Shortly before she passed away in 2006, Art bought a bar in Athens that he later renamed Jackie O’s Brewpub. Now there are three Athens locations – Public House Restaurant, Uptown Brewpub, and their Taproom and Production Brewery – plus Jackie O’s on Fourth in Columbus.

Their design team’s breakthrough follows two prior contest entries. In 2021 they submitted a design created for Who Cooks For You, Jackie O’s signature Hazy Pale Ale. The next year it was for Sing to the Sun Hazy Indian Pale Ale. This year’s contest required designers to produce a commercial can design using at least one color from the INX Color Catalog before January 1, 2024. Mystic Mama West Coast Style IPA became available in the market in January 2023, but it is a core brand line extension that dates back to 2012.

“We were drawn to INX as the leader in metal decorating technology when we started amping up production of our canned products,” recalled Erica Mirth, Head of Design for Jackie O’s Brewery. “The INX Color Catalog provides our team with ample color options and ensures that the colors we select will be true to the swatches within the catalog. It has become an essential tool in our design.”

Using the metal decorating industry’s only true color standard, the design team had about 650 color metal swatches to choose from. 

“We knew we wanted a royal feeling color palette from the beginning. After much consideration and testing, five colors were used in the final Mystic Mama artwork,” said Mirth, noting the white, black, an opaque yellow, and two opaque purple color selections.

The design was a collaborative effort involving woodcut artist Bryn Perrott, whose studio is 150 miles from Athens in Morgantown, West Virginia. Art Oestrike said it was an easy decision to use Bryn’s artwork for the second rendition of the brewery’s core cans.

“In 2012, we set out to create a product line that stood out on the shelves like no other. When it became apparent to update those designs, we wanted to replace the individual characters with a to-scale design that filled the entirety of the can,” he explained. “Our team and Bryn developed a plan to update all our core cans with this methodology. Once it was presented to her, she went to work on the woodcuts and the new layout was formed.”

Oestrike said that after a month of work, it took another two months for the design team to digitize the artwork and add colors to each design.

“Upon approval, the artwork was sent to the graphics specialist at Ball Corporation and to Josh Nigh, the INX inplant manager at Ball’s facility in Findlay, Ohio. This collaboration has always been one of the best steps of the process, from conception to implementation. From start to finish, it took about nine months to complete this award-winning design.”

In addition to being available at all Jackie O’s locations, Mystic Mama West Coast Style IPA is being distributed in six-packs at convenience stores in Ohio and West Virginia, as well as in Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington D.C.

Related: Packaging Strategies interviewed Sun Chemical's David Randall about decorating solutions for two-piece metal packaging. Check out the interview here.