The Off-Centered Wall

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Today we got to work on The Off-centered Wall.  I'll get to the wall in a sec... 

Jill and I celebrated the end of Dave's first week at Dogfish Head by dragging him into the warehouse to help us construct the first panel.  Dave joins us as our first full-time full-on in-house graphic designer.

Mariah and I have worked with him on freelance projects for over a year - he is a fellow beer geek and gets what we are all about so we are very happy to have him on board. Dave's timely arrival has allowed Mariah to effectively double the size of our global marketing department in a single hire. So now she can focus on additional pursuits like twittering about upcoming events with such maniacal frequency smoke wafts out of her iPhone.  

So, back to the wall...  We like the idea that our ideal of off-centeredness is an interactive, communal, dynamic, creative, evolving, purposeful thinga-ma-jig. Kind of like our whole company. So we asked a bunch of our co-workers to submit ideas, artwork, phrases, talisman, and whatnot that best reflect their own perception of off-centeredness.  We have been gathering these goodies in our cubicles and homes and have finally put our plan into action. 

Mark and Jill are building numerous giant 4 X 8 ft corkboard panels that we will be affixing the many faces of off-centeredness onto.  We will start with a few collages made by full-time dogfish folk and always keep one giant corkboard panel open for tour guests, tasting/retailer visitors and other beer-centric folk who take the time to make a visit to our production brewery here in Milton.  We will save our favorite additions from each year and build a library of annual collages from here forward.  Our goal is to do a tour down the line where we show various years of curated Off-centered Walls at different beer events in different beer cities. 

So here's where you come in.  If you are planning on visiting our brewery bring something - art-craft-phrase-postcard-crayon-letter-label-drawing-dried-flower-arrangement-etc - that informs your own perception of off-centeredness. We know that we've grown because fellow beer-evangelists have helped spread the word of off-centered ale so we think it's really important to include everyone who helps us get the word out every day in this project.  We should have the wall functional and available for additions by May 15th.   

We hope you'll come by , check it out, and add to it.