Maybe not that big a mistake in the grand scheme of things, but this one had us running around these past 24 hours.

We have a big event with Pretty Things tonight. It’s going to be amazing. We’re selling 4 of their beers, 2 at Kendall, 2 at HUB. Even installed a new tap at the HUB to enable the 2 taps, previously we could only handle 1. We’re sponsoring a beer crawl, participants will get a T-shirt, mug, 4 beers, Clover snacks. We’re even parking a truck between the 2 restaurants.

So yesterday when I found that the T-shirt wasn’t done I panicked a little. We had a graphic designer that we just cut loose. Just wasn’t working out. We thought he’d ordered the T-shirts, but when I looked at the art closely it wasn’t anything like what we wanted. But he was already gone.

We worked out a crazy situation with our printer QRSTs in Somerville where they could receive the design today by 8am and had T-shirts made for us the same day. Sorry Peter, hope this post doesn’t have folks at your door asking for same day service!

I came in early and did something I haven’t done for a while: fired up Photoshop and designed a T-shirt. It was down to the wire. I called Lucia at 7:55am saying “I don’t know what we’re going to do… I can’t get this right.” That picture shows some of my designs that weren’t good enough. We had this awesome spontaneous crayon drawing that Dann made back at our first ever beer launch in 2011. I’ve saved it all these years to use for something and now I was worried I couldn’t do it justice. I’m not great at this stuff which is why we need a graphic designer.

Don’t worry all, talking through it with Lucia we had a last minute inspiration and I think you’re going to love the result. I only wish I’d kept my cool when this all hit. I was a bit out of sorts. But everything turned out fine.

I’ll keep the final design under wraps until tonight. See you at Kendall at 6pm!