A trip down beer can lane

I find a lot of awesome pictures for this blog on Flickr.

And once in a blue moon, a set of pictures there will suck me in so that I keep clicking through to see the photographer’s other work. Anyone who sees the pictures I take for this blog knows I’m no Ansel Adams, so I envy people who can find intriguing things to photograph and create a really original set of images.

Last night I got suckered into Lance 15100’s “Beer!”

It’s nothing but front-on shots of rare and interesting beer cans from all over the world. Might not sound like much, but then most people have never looked as closely at beer cans as Lance, a graphic designer from Cincinnati. 

Beer cans have evolved in more ways than one. If was only a couple of months ago that aluminum cans celebrated 50 years. The tins cans that preceded them look like oil quarts in comparison, with concave tops and thick seams. One good thing about old cans was how the artwork looked. Aluminum cans reflect any ink, making every can shiny. Tin cans were a much more neutral canvas to paint masterworks on.

The two people who will appreciate this most are beer geeks and graphic designers. Geeks because, out of the 163 beers in the set, I only recognized three. Most are of breweries were bought or folded long ago. My personal favorites were the plain white can marked simply “Lite Beer,” followed by three separate white cans with no distinguishing marks except “Light Beer.”

Graphic designers get the same walk down memory lane, but in reminders of what colors were popular and marketable for beer. Most of these cans predate the time of heavy branding, proper brewery identification and warnings. The best way to sell the beer was to make the packaging look catchy like Old Topper Snappy Ale or the free-wheeling Pacific Lager.

Since everything old is new again, like Schlitz, it’s interesting to think that this might not just be the past of beer cans, but also the future.