Beer Bike shirt designers talk inspiration

By Morgan Gage and Annika Bhananker     3/30/22 12:19am

The festivities of Beer Bike pick up and will continue throughout the week, and Beer Bike itself quickly approaches this Saturday, April 2. Students will don their college Beer Bike as their college teams race around the track and vie for one of the most hotly contested titles at Rice — champions of Beer Bike 2022. For the first time since Beer Bike 2019, eager students will be able to not only wear their college’s shirt but will be able to display the designs with pride while they cheer on their college biking and chug teams. The artists and designers behind the Beer Bike shirts emailed the Thresher about their inspiration for the shirt as well as the thought that went into the design process.

SID RICH: Frank Ginatra: Fly me to the Blue Moon

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Designed by: Adriana Amaris and Savannah Parrot

“The inspiration is very much based on Frank Sinatra’s music and timeless style … I also wanted to seize the opportunity to design one more thing for Sid before I graduate. Beer Bike is very much a showcase of each college and our shirt along with every other colleges’ shirts are a major part of college representation on the day of and for years after. I’ve always loved how [past Beer Bike] shirts from each college are still so recognizable.” – Amaris

“The “B” in the Blue of “Fly Me The Blue Moon” is the same typeface that’s used on the logo from the Blue Moon beer logo. Super small but I thought it was cute.” – Parrot

BROWN: The Thirsty Games: May the beers be ever in your hand

Designed by: Waverly Dickason 

“Brown’s amazing Beer Bike coords and merch team came up with the idea to incorporate the mockingjay with a brew in hand — I just put it together! Of course, we also had to include our twist on the infamous “may the odds be ever in your favor” to finish off our vision for the Thirsty Games logo.”  – Dickason

LOVETT: Beer Bold: The Champagne for Rice

Designed by: Bryan Sanchez

“After our college voted on our theme of Beer Bold: The Champagne for Rice, we wanted to honor an iconic Rice symbol: Lovett Hall [and] the Sallyport! With the design, we tried our best to recreate Lovett Hall and integrate the champagne theme by fitting the bottles into the structure. We think it was a great way to parody the Beer Bold campaign while also honoring it through Beer Bike.” – Sanchez

MCMURTRY: Mr. Worldwine: Been there, chugged that

Designed by: Amy Zhang

“This was a fun theme because there’s not always a specific person that is the “face” of the beer bike theme, so I had fun trying to represent the likeness of Pitbull without using too many colors or lines ... Because Pitbull is “Mr. Worldwide” and I wanted to emphasize Rice’s diverse campus population of students, I designed graphical representations of different flags from different parts of the world and put them on wine bottles to represent “Mr. Worldwine”. Pitbull’s iconography is also layered onto a map of the world.” – Zhang

BAKER: Marvel Gin-ematic Universe presents: Avengers Pregame

Designed by: Joyce Li

“The shirt I designed helps encompass Beer Bike because it focused on different Avengers characters holding a variety of soft alcohol. We mainly stuck with this shirt because we thought it was funny. We spent a while trying to decide which drink would go with which Avengers character, so we hope other people agree with our decisions.” – Li

MARTEL: BarioKart: RainBrew Road

Designed by: Kianna Broadman

“I like trying to make art and I also wanted Martel to have more design options to vote on so that we could have a shirt design that people liked, so ... I started  thinking about how I could include Mario, rainbows, drinks, and/or bikes in one design. I also looked at images of Mario online and thought I might be able to draw him on his kart with a glass of something in his hand, so this design is the intersection of the combination of Mario and a drink with my art capabilities. I’m really happy that people ended up liking the design! In Mario Kart, Mario’s hat and kart have an M on them, but on our shirt it’s MC for Martel College.” – Broadman

JONES: Britney Spirits: It’s Beer Bike bitch

Designed by: Ryan Emelle, Jen Spell, Mary Brady, Terri Liu, Steven Dillman, Sarah Sowell

“Our shirt is based off of a Britney Spears concert shirt. We wanted a nice shirt that people can wear again. We chose to have our shirts pink this year as it better aligned with our theme: Britney Spirits.” – Brady 

WIESS: HogBeer School of WitchBeer and WizardBeer: Battle Against Lord VoldeBeer

Designed by: Varun Kukunoor

“The inspiration was melding elements of Team Family Wiess and the prevalent themes of the Harry Potter franchise. We really enjoyed that process. For instance, the TFW on the sorting hat looks like an HW (for Hogwarts) as well as the TFW.” – Kukunoor

WILL RICE: Gin-N-Out: Victory you can taste

Designed by: Guillian Paguila

“Beer Bike holds a special place in Will Rice’s culture. To us, it’s a means to both reassert our complete and utter dominance on the bike track and a means to remind everyone that we are and always will be the only college to sweep the races five friendly times. As such, from the  ‘Victory You Can Taste’ menu title to the ‘Five- By-Five’, this shirt is covered with references to our past and upcoming victories. For the front of the shirt, if you look closely, you can see the Will Rice Centennial logo replacing the copyright symbol. For the back, the typical In-N-Out fountain drink is replaced by a beer can decorated with a Phoenix/ Whale pattern instead of In-N-Out palm trees! Each menu item [on the back] includes easter eggs that all Will Ricers should know.” – Paguila

DUNCAN: Spongebrew SquarePints: The Krusty Keg

Designed by: Deema Beram

“My mind immediately went to this one scene from the first Spongebob movie. Spongebob and Patrick went to Goofy Goober’s Ice Cream Party Boat after Spongebob was denied a job position, and they eat so many sundaes that they start acting really loopy. Looking back, I realize that that entire scene was just a kiddy version of going to a bar and getting drunk, so I thought basing the design off of one snapshot where they’re really disoriented was fitting.” – Beram

Editor’s Note: Deema Beram is the Thresher’s social media manager.

HANSZEN: Winnie the Brew and the Hundred Tankard Woods

Designed by: Lily Remington

“I wanted to design the shirt with the theme at the forefront. I really loved Winnie the Pooh as a kid so I was super excited when this theme was selected ... However, I didn’t want to overwhelm the design with too much alcohol because I wanted to make a cute shirt that others would maybe be willing to wear even after Beer Bike. I also wanted to make the shirt more kid-friendly so that the Hanszen RAs and their kids would enjoy the design as well. Initially, the design went through a few phases, but through each we kept the main drawing of Winnie the Pooh slightly buzzed ... and I decided to replace his HUNNY pot with a tankard of beer.” – Remington

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