Artist for the revolution

Jason Roberson has created some of the most recognizable craft-beer labels in the world

While on a business trip in Sonoma County, Jason Roberson walked into a liquor store and was taken aback. There he found an entire cooler stocked head-to-toe with craft beers from a variety of companies all carrying a personal touch: his design work.

Roberson said he got a little emotional, and he snapped a photo to memorialize the moment.

“There’s something just amazing about having your work on a beer label that somebody is having a great time drinking and having the party of their life, and I’m a part of that, in a way,” he said. “My goal is to make it hard for people to throw that beer bottle away at the end of the night, like: ‘God, I should keep this. It’s so cool!’ That’s what I strive for.”

Roberson, a homegrown Chicoan, has been a full-time professional designer since 2004. He got his start at one of the highest profile craft beer companies in the world, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., before branching out in 2015 and starting his own design company, Craft Beer Branding. He’s since enjoyed wide success designing labels and marketing materials for breweries all over the country, winning graphic and/or package design awards for eight of the last nine years from industry magazine Graphic Design USA.

The married father of two sons often juggles a dozen projects at any given time. In the past 4 1/2 years, he has worked with over 40 breweries.

His design work for Sierra Nevada includes what remains some of the brewery’s most iconic labels, and often posters and tap handles as well, including the intricate golden tree of the Trip in the Woods barrel-aged series and the hooded, pensive monk on Ovila Abbey ales.

Some of Roberson’s other notable clients include Bear Republic Brewing Co. in Cloverdale, Deschutes Brewery in Oregon, Russian River Brewing Co. in Santa Rosa and Windsor, and Highland Brewing Co. in North Carolina.

Russian River Brewing Co. owner and brewer Vinnie Cilurzo first worked with Roberson when his brewery partnered with Sierra Nevada on Brux, a domesticated wild ale. His most recent project with him is one of the North Bay brewery’s more complex designs, Cilurzo said, and will be unveiled in about two weeks. For the new Robert and Jannemie saisons, Roberson created a scene of the Belgian port city Antwerp, featuring its iconic cathedral and the Scheldt River. When the two beers are placed alongside one another, it creates a full landscape.

“He’s just super, super talented,” Cilurzo said. “Almost every time he comes back with almost exactly what I had in mind. He just has a really good way of listening and hearing what I want … to really capture the spirit of what I’m going for.”

Stylistically, Roberson’s work is diverse. Take, for instance, Mad River Brewing Co.’s Everyone Gose Mad, with the vivid visage of a bearded brewmaster bringing the ale to life, à la Dr. Frankenstein. Compare that with Russian River’s Tempo Change, a sparse metronome with interwoven hop vines providing a pop of color. Then there’s Bear Republic’s Thru the Haze: The design is a trippy, dizzying kaleidoscopic swirl.

Roberson said the variation is intentional. He doesn’t have a signature look, and prefers to focus on versatility, with a caveat: “I really try to push color and make things vibrant and pop off the shelf.”

“I try to work in every possible style,” he said. “That, for me, is what keeps the creative inspiration going.”

Part of that inspiration is drawn from flavor: When Roberson is working with a client, that’s when it’s time to crack open the ales they offer and “just see what they’re all about.” It’s a part of his creative process.

“It makes it a really fun, positive [connection] when I’m enjoying their product, as well as doing the work with them day in, day out,” he said.

Roberson was the kind of kid who often got called out in class for doodling. He studied design at Butte College before earning a bachelor’s in communication design at Chico State.

For much of his life, he considered his passion for art a hobby. He worked in the recording arts industry for several years before moving back to Chico and working at Herreid Music. That’s where he met Bob Littell (the former longtime manager of the Sierra Nevada Big Room), who hired him to create the logo for the Big Room’s live-music PBS series, Sierra Center Stage.

Shortly after, he was brought on as a full-time designer at Sierra Nevada. Roberson went from being a department of one in 2004 to managing a department of seven as the art director for the growing company when he left in 2015, he said.

“I was there during literally the explosion of the craft beer industry,” he said. “It was, like, the most amazing and challenging experience … just pedal to the metal, go, go, go, crank out national branding basically by myself [for a while].”

Roberson said beer lovers often are baffled to find he chose to strike out on his own. He made the call after visiting the World of Beer bar in Atlanta (which has since closed). Out of the thousand beer bottles they had displayed, only three featured his work.

“I wanted to be a bigger part of the industry … and have a wider range of work out there.”

It’s been a fulfilling and fun ride, Roberson said, and he’s in it for the long haul.

“It’s not like a lot of industries where it’s cutthroat and people are stabbing each other in the back. It’s very cordial and friendly,” he said. “To me, they’re so similar in so many ways, all these companies: Their passion and their dedication to quality.”