Wilco Creates Custom Beer, Posters and T-Shirts for Their Iceland Gigs

To celebrate its recent three-night residency at Eldborg Hall in Reykjavík, Iceland, Wilco offered concertgoers special posters and T-shirts, plus craft beers with distinctive labels.

The band enlisted Toronto-based design shop Zoca and local microbrewery Ægir Brugghús. That creative team produced a custom lager (with pink line art) and IPA (green line art) available at the shows and during an acoustic performance at the Ingólfsskáli Viking Restaurant.

The labels suggest the rough Icelandic landscape. And if you look closely, the band’s name can be found among the topographic art.

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For Jose Garcia, owner and operator of Zoca, the project began as an assignment to create a poster to commemorate the residency, but grew into something more.

“My intention was to capture Iceland’s rugged landscape by utilizing a visually simple technique,” Garcia tells Muse. “It struck me that carving the band’s name into the line-art would lend a unique touch while keeping the name subtly concealed within the wireframe.

“The topographic aesthetic also evokes an analog and sound-wave quality that I believed would complement Wilco’s expressive and sometimes abstract musical arrangements,” he says.

That approach delighted Wilco’s camp, and band manager Crystal Myers proposed using the imagery on beer cans.

“The design, though inherently simple, evokes a sense of modernism and vastness that to me paired well both with Iceland and Wilco,” Garcia says. “It became evident that the label should be black, providing a striking contrast to the vibrant, colorful line work. This darkness aimed to encapsulate the volcanic and rocky nature of Iceland, creating a visually captivating effect.”

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