Filtering by Category: Speaking,Vintage

IC Farm League

Apparel,  Design,  Film,  Illustration,  New Work,  Packaging,  Product Design,  Seattle,  Sports,  Vintage
Posted by Invisible Creature

Long before music and design (and almost everything else), there was ... baseball.

In the eighties it was our hometown pride and joy - The Bend Bucks - who would later become the Portland Rockies. The Bucks were a single A farm club for the (now) Anaheim Angels. We'd love to hit the games with Dad and grab autographs from the retired major leaguers who were acting coaches for the team. $5 tickets and cheap popcorn didn't hurt either.

Between Bucks games, the best movie ever created, our own little league games (where I told all my teammates that I was related to this guy), watching the Braves (lose) every waking moment on TBS and our unhealthy addiction to baseball cards (wish we still had this), there was time for little else. In 1989, our family moved to Sacramento and our love of the game got even stronger - thanks to the Giants and these guys across the bay. RIP Candlestick Park.

Fast forward 25 years later. After visiting the beautiful new Ebbets Field Flannels storefront in Seattle a few months back, we came up with a crazy idea to fuse a few of our old passions into one: Baseball, art and ... people. People who are making really cool things in the world of baseball - and beyond. We even commissioned our Humble Beast bros in Portland to create some knickerbocker-era music to bring it all together. After coming up with a dream team list (and it was hard to stop at 6), we had our roster.

Enter: Invisible Creature Farm League.

We've partnered with Ebbets Field Flannels from Seattle, Mitchell Bat Co. from Nashville, Leather Head Sports from New Jersey, Oxford Pennant from New York, Curtis Clark Woodworks (or, Dad) from California and the uber-talented and undisputed aesthetic king of baseball himself, Jon Contino from New York to bring you IC inspired game gear for your closet, wall, shelf, desk ... and even the field.

Have a look around our rookie season and click some stuff. A HUGE thanks to all of our collaborators for an amazing experience. We hope you enjoy ...

 

IC Speaks At LEGO

Design,  Environments,  Illustration,  New Work,  Posters,  Speaking,  Toys
Posted by Invisible Creature

We had the great privilege and honor of speaking at LEGO's internal Design Camp last week - a day away from the office for the creative team in beautiful Enfield, Connecticut. Scott Decoteau, along with the talented and generous crew at LEGO, were gracious hosts during our time in New England. Highlights of the trip included the LEGO HQ tour (wow), dangerously delicious indian food, bowling and sharing sentimental stories about the infamous drawstring denim LEGO bag.

To commemorate our talk, we decided to make some things. One of them being a poster of us creating our new mark out of 4,236 bricks - flown in from all over the world. After 2 hot days, 1 broken mallet (don't ask), 6 iced coffees and 3 blisters, the mosaic came to life. Extra special thanks to LEGO for supplying the baseplates.

Unfortunately these posters and prints are not for sale, but who knows - we may throw some in future IC poster orders ...

LEGO_3

The Spit Swap PDX

Design,  Illustration,  Speaking
Posted by Invisible Creature

Well, The Spit Swap has come and gone. The 2-night stint with yours truly in Portland and Mr. Draplin laying it down in Seattle was one for the record books. Portland, I can't thank you enough for cruising out to The Ace to watch me sweat it out up there as I attempted to tell our scattered story. It was a fun night of sharing great conversations with real folks. I had a blast. And Portland - your art, design and illustration community is one to be envied. Hats off to you nice people ... Massive high-fives to Eric Hillerns for the hospitality and for dreaming this baby up. Seriously. Aaron Draplin (and family!) for the obvious reasons. The man has talent in about a zillion areas, including the English language. But you guys knew that.

And of course The Ace Hotel, Lloyd Winter, Duane King, 52 Limited, Always With Honor, Portland AIGA, Fort Port ... the list goes on. Thanks to everyone who helped out, brought beer, food, tweeted, you name it. THANK YOU!

A few rad shots of the night, courtesy of long-time broseph Mr. Arges:

We stopped by the mighty W+K to visit one helluva guy Lloyd Winter and to apparently have our socks knocked off by the sheer awesomeness in that building. Wow.

"Yup, that's a bear"

Before the gig started, we stopped by Instrument's new spot to see our buds and visit the infamous teepees. Incredible space. Incredible talent.

J.D. and Vince giving us the tour ...

"Is this thing on?"

We meet at last ...

Tyler and Elsa from Always With Honor with a touching and funny introduction ... thanks again, guys.

Zac strong-arming folks into buying paper and sticky things ...

"It's just a theory" ... Duane, Josh and a few others hear me out regarding my thoughts on relativity.

--

Anyways, it was a rad night. Thanks again, Portland.

An Evening Of Sights And Sounds

Design,  Illustration,  Music,  Posters,  Speaking
Posted by Invisible Creature

Last year, our buddy Josh Higgins asked if we'd cruise down to his city sometime to tell our story and flash some .jpg's on a big screen. We happily agreed, so here we are. We're excited to bring our dog and pony show to the beautiful city of San Diego on April 2nd. We'll be speaking at the legendary Casbah club, but what we're most excited about is The Black Heart Procession will be joining us to shut down the evening. Oh, and a little bonus for you early birds: The first 200 folks through the door get an 18" x 24" silk-screened poster, namely the one you see above. Tickets are $10 advance/$12 day of show and you can purchase them here.

The Way It Was, V.2

Advertising,  Bum Out,  Design,  The Way It Was,  Vintage
Posted by Ryan Clark

In this series I'm going to try my best not to compare apples to oranges. I understand there are vast differences in technology, ideology, legality, etc between designs of the past and designs of the present. However, I believe there was, is, and will always be a way to almost objectively design something properly. To me, this means a design that is well executed, aesthetically pleasing and properly communicative... in relation to whatever is being "sold."

TWIW, V.2 is in regard to travel advertising. In this case, specifically cruises. Here are my thoughts on the ads in question:

1. I don't even know where to start. How about the copy? Clearly one is simply advertising a specific cruise ship, while the other goes into much more detail about the price, locations, discounts, dates, etc., but that in itself says something about modern advertising's problem with forcing too much information into a single ad. Add to that the tragedy of 5+ arbitrarily used fonts and typesetting that seems to make no sense at all. Except of course for the legal line, which is strategically set in black type over a dark portion of the image. Crafty.

2. We used to marvel at things like the massive Cunard cruise ship, shown above. But as technology and engineering progress, we're less interested in how we'll be getting to our destination and more interested in where it's taking us (and how much it will cost). But aren't these ads for the cruise itself? If you just want to go to The Bahamas, you can fly there in a fraction of the time. This is about the experience of the cruise. And as you can see in the more recent ad, the actual cruise ship has become an afterthought; a footnote.

3. As for the imagery, we're faced with the obvious difference between professional designer and someone with a personal computer. Before the computer we relied on professionals to do the job of advertising. They were skilled in their craft. They knew type and composition and cohesion and color. They designed because they were good at it. I know I'm stating the obvious here, (and there's a heaping helping of irony as I sit here and type this) but it's a bit of a bummer that the computer has turned every civilized human into a jack-of-all-trades.

4. In the end, one is clearly worth framing and displaying in your home, and the other is sure to end up in a trash bin. I refuse to believe that we collect things that are "vintage" purely based on nostalgia. The bottom line is that, in most cases, that old stuff is flat out better than the garbage that we see today.

The Way It Was #001

Advertising,  Bum Out,  Design,  The Way It Was,  Vintage
Posted by Ryan Clark

I had the idea a while back to post about the perils of modern design, specifically in regard to rebranding, the evolution of a particular design and things of that nature. I've decided to finally pull the trigger and go for it. As my brother has begun posting a series dedicated to our grandfather, I thought this might be the right time. After all... the time period in which our grandfather was designing will often be the era in which my postings will refer to.

"The Way It Was" will be a study (and occasional pseudo-rant) about a particular design of the past, and a directly (or at least somewhat) related piece from recent years.

TWIW #001 is based on an email conversation I had with a few like-minded friends a couple of years ago. The subject in this case is a box of Trix cereal. Target had announced that it was re-issuing old General Mills cereal box designs for a limited time, (God bless design-savvy corporations) and in being reminded of that classic old box design, I couldn't help but dissect the modern design and suppose what it's trying to tell today's consumer. Here are my thoughts:

1. The logo, once simple and bold, is now 3-dimensional, has a white stroke, yellow bevel, and emboss. ALL of which have gradients. Somehow this "pops" more.

2. Since brand loyalty is dead, the nice big General Mills logo at the top of the box (which I'm sure used to assure people of the reliability and integrity of the product) is replaced by a very small GM logo, overpowered by a "whole grain guarantee" and a list of other nutritional values. Not that nutrition is anything to shrug at, but let's be real- this is Trix.

3. The cereal itself isn't enough anymore, so there has to be added incentive to buy. In this case, there's an ad for "fruitalicious" games on the back of the box.

4. The fun-loving bunny on cute roller skates is replaced by (honestly) what seems to be an INSANE rabbit, literally throwing Trix at you.

5. Lastly, and probably most importantly, the modern box has a disclaimer sentence that reads something like "cereal shown not actual size," because people are so stupid (or assumed to be so stupid) that they can't comprehend that the 1" macro-lens-photographed meteor puffs on the front of the box are bigger than they actually are.

Latest News Older News