Caña celebrates the humble pint

The man behind design/travel site we-heart.com James Davidson got in contact to tell us about Caña, a soon-to-launched independent print magazine with an accompanying exhibition to open in Barcelona next week. Caña plots the relationship of the humble pint and the creative world. “I have always loved beer, long before the craft beer explosion I was drinking real ale, warm and cloudy – naturally, the craft beer thing swept me up and when I moved to Barcelona three years ago, I befriended the guys behind a fledgling brewery and the obsession grew exponentially,” James explains. Caña is also the brainchild of Derby-based developer and long-time collaborator John Wilson.

“A couple of years ago I started tiring of the internet and the idea for a print mag related to my two loves: beer and culture began,” James says of Caña’s origins. “Working for myself, the process has been slow — prioritising paid work over developing the mag, but it’s finally taking shape, and I had the opportunity to put together an exhibition showing some of the talent that has inspired me throughout the process of putting the mag together.”

The creatives featured in the exhibition come directly from the pages of Caña’s first issue, and include Alec Doherty (“I love his stiff-upper-lip early-1900s approach, Art Deco infused excellence that has a disconnect from all we associate with beer in the 2010s”), Egle Zvirblyte (“The sort of illustration I adore — free-flowing Fear and Loathing-style oddities that defy pigeonholing”), Emil Sellström (“Miami Vice and beer, what more does anyone fucking need?”), Mariel Osborn (“Slapping the machismo of the beer world in the face with whimsy and wit, a breath of fresh female air who’s worked with one of the most exciting new forces in craft beer”) and Petra Eriksson (“Honestly, I’m new to her work, but have been following her on Instagram for a little while – she had an illustration that went ‘drinking water from a jam jar like a Brooklyn hipster’, so I asked her to update it and she obliged!”).

“They’re just artists and designers I admire, and who have taken an approach to beer that is non-traditional,” James says, “which is the ethos behind Caña.”