It started as an Instagram account where I posted panoramic photos of craft beer can art, using the approach shown and described here.

Even after my posting became less consistent, I kept creating the content. I was still photographing cans, building the archive, and thinking there ought to be a better home for it than a feed. A couple of weeks ago, I finally acted on that and turned the idea into something more complete.

CraftBeerArtwork.com grew from a simple page that mostly echoed Instagram posts into a site with a clearer purpose and more value for the craft beer and art community.

The site is centered on the artwork itself rather than ratings, reviews, or beer scores. Plenty of platforms already cover those areas well. What interested me more was the visual side of craft beer — the illustration, branding, typography, and overall creativity that make many cans memorable well beyond what is inside them.

To help keep the project active, I also built an automated process that identifies artwork pieces that have not previously been posted and shares them to social media. That has been useful not just for getting more of the collection out into the world, but also for inviting input. I have already had breweries and artists reach out with credit details and other helpful context, which has made the project more collaborative and more useful than it would have been as a static archive alone.

Once the website started to feel real, building an accompanying iOS app felt like the right next step. The website is well suited to browsing and exploring, but the app is designed more intentionally around discovery. Instead of scanning a grid, you experience one piece of artwork at a time in a full-screen, swipe-based interface. As you move through the collection and like what stands out to you, patterns begin to emerge. You start to notice the same artists and breweries showing up again and again, which turns casual browsing into a more personal way of discovering whose work you actually connect with.

That is where the app becomes especially useful. It keeps track of what you have seen, what you have liked, and what remains unseen. It can serve up artwork you have not seen yet, make it easy to revisit favorites, and help you jump directly into artist and brewery profiles to explore more of their work. In that sense, the app is not just a mobile version of the site; it is a better tool for immersion, discovery, and building a personal connection to the artwork.

There is also a nice connection to my broader ecosystem of projects. Many of the breweries featured in Craft Beer Artwork are also featured on my other beer-related site, CraftBeerSpots.com, so the two projects naturally complement each other. One is focused on the artwork and visual identity of the beer, while the other helps people discover the places and breweries behind it.

It is still evolving. New cans get photographed and added whenever I come across something worth capturing, and both the site and the app will continue to improve as the collection grows.

At its core, though, this project has simply been a fun way to bring together a few things I enjoy: craft beer, photography, design, software, and building connected experiences around the things I find interesting.