Filtering by Category: Toys,Vintage
A mighty big thanks to everyone who came out to our Full Circle show/Leroy C. launch party at Super7 on Saturday night. We had a blast. And as you can see above, Leroy did too.
If you find yourself in SF anytime soon, the show will be up for a few more weeks.
Photos courtesy of Zac Schwiet, Kaiju Chronicle and Toybot Studios.
Get him while you can ...
He's alive! Metallic silver, white and dark red spray on red vinyl. Available at 6PM on 4/23 at Super7 in conjunction with our Full Circle show. Come on out!
Available online the following Monday, 4/25.
We're excited to announce that we'll be showing a collection of work at the Super7 store in San Francisco, opening on April 23rd at 6PM. We'll also be debuting the first colorway of Leroy C., the newest member of the IC family! Super7 will have a limited amount on hand to take home.
We'll be sharing a collection of 20+ posters and prints, including a number of illustrations from our late grandfather, Alfred Paulsen. As someone who influenced our work tremendously and spent much of his young adult life in the bay area, we thought it would be fitting to include some of his work in the show.
We'll also have a few new limited Leroy C. prints available. Come out and say hi!
Awesome custom Leroy C. by D-Lux.
Well, he departs tomorrow AM. Big thanks to everyone who picked up an unpainted Leroy C. Adios!
We often get asked what our process is like. While we have multiple ways of conceptualizing and pitching ideas, the 3-step process that I'm going to outline below is pretty standard fare for us, as I'm sure it is with many illustrators. Sketch, sketch some more, sketch again, then on to final. 'Final' for us, usually means we hop into Illustrator and block out shapes. Once we have our shapes dialed and approved, we move on to lining and shading in Photoshop. There are many times when we start and finish in Photoshop as well, but a typical project like this will begin as vector art. I thought it might be fun to break down the evolution of an illustrated project, specifically a Gift Card for Target. Let us begin ...
With the majority of art direction already fleshed out by the wonderful team at Target, we're given the project and asked to create sketches based on their initial ideas. Since their initial ideas are always completely awesome, it's a joy to build off of them. The name of this particular card is 'Glow-In-The Dark Space Maze'. In this case, it's a card that doubles as a glow-in-the-dark space maze that doubles as a spaceship. Wait, is that triples as? ... Nevermind.
The first task is the game itself. The manufacturer needs to get started on producing these suckers, so the game dieline is first priority. After a few sketches, we dial it down and come up with our shape.
After the basic game shape is a wrap, we get to the fun part - figuring out the maze! After heading to the store to pick up a few similar maze games, we play, throw down to the floor and curse at said maze games. Once we think we know what we're doing, we start to sketch out our walls. To make it easier, we're given the ball diameter and wall thickness before we begin. After a zillion attempts, the sketch below is the winning configuration - which means anyone under the age of 5 can conquer the game in under 1 minute while the rest of us need about an hour.
After the sketch is approved (and tweaked a little), we move to final vector art for the manufacturer. Bada-bing:
After the game material is off being made, it's time to move into final art. With the nature of this card being glow-in-the-dark, the client asks that we use bright colors. Done. Here are a few colors we pitched:
... as well as this color scheme, which ultimately gets chosen.
So now that the game itself is done, time to start sketching the actual card backer - which is always a big chunk of the fun. We sent the client a few options, with this particular idea taking home the trophy ...
So now what's next? You guessed it. A few tweaks, then on to Illustrator. That's when we start blocking out shapes and finalizing color schemes. After a few rounds of small revisions, we have our final ready for shading ...
And there you have it ... a finished Gift Card. That was fun, right? Now it's your turn.
See it a bit larger in our portfolio. Now go grab one and keep the cursing to a minimum please.
Well, that was fast. Our unpainted Leroy C. figure sold out in 24 minutes. If you weren't able to grab one today, have no fear: we'll have plenty of the colored version in April. Thanks to everyone for grabbing them today.
Could there be more IC toys in the future? We'll have to wait and see ...
Meet Leroy C. He's 4.25" tall, extremely friendly, loves children and is 100% house trained. Before he arrives in full color, we've got 30 all-black prototype's ready for adoption. In the shop (complete with photos) on Monday, February 7th at 10:00PST. $30 + shipping.
We'll never forget that day in 1983 that our mom brought home a bag of Legos the size of a small car. She had picked it up at a garage sale (who sells Legos?) for $8. From that point on, we were hooked. For obvious reasons, Legos ended up being our favorite toy for years to come - and as with most things in parenting life, it's come full circle and is now my son's favorite toy. Like many folks, those bricks have been a big part of our family.
So as you can imagine, I wish I could hop in one of these to go back and tell my 8-year-old self about our newest project for Target, the Lego Build A Bullseye! Gift Card. We've been fortunate to work on many cool projects over the years, but this one was sorta special. We actually wrapped this up in May, so it's fun to finally see it in stores for the holidays.
Below are some shots of the carrier on press a few months back:
And here is the endcap fixture at the store. They were sold out at noon today, so I'm guessing there are other human beings that like Lego as well.
Thanks to our (always) amazing art director Ted for the brains behind this project, and the fine folks at LEGO for giving us the green light.
Oh, and check out the cool little animation below:
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.
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.
It's official. We're dropping our first toy through the mighty Super 7 in December. Just in time for those stockings. Join our mailing list or follow us on Twitter for updates and shipping info. More to come ...
Charles and Ray just moved in. Thanks House.
I gotta be honest, apparently I've been living under a gigantic rock and hadn't heard of the awesome NOTCOT until today when they posted a really cool write-up titled Art Of The Gift Card showcasing some of the new holiday Gift Cards at Target. They even went above and beyond and devoted a special something to our 'Winter Fishing Hole' Gift Card/Game. We've actually been getting reports that they are selling out at stores (that's a good thing, right?) but you can find them online through 12/31.
Oh, and yes I'm multi-tasking by kicking myself while adding the NOTCOT RSS feed to my daily visits.
Apartment Therapy just posted an article about an antique store called Hunt & Gather in Minneapolis, MN. I'm currently searching for airfare as we speak.
Not really, but this looks like some sort of paradise.
Holy smokes! I can't decide on whether I'd like to be Morpheus or John Lasseter at this moment. So good.
Thanks Rob.
Growing up, Ryan and I were Lego FANATICS. I vividly remember the massive room-sized bag of Legos that my mom found at a garage sale for $8 - and the day she brought it home. Our jaws dropped. We dabbled in Transformers, G.I. Joe and He-Man, but the Legos got the most love - for years and years. Naturally, my own kids love them (what kid doesn't?!) and those days in the 80's of creating airplanes and robots out of blocks are ever-present in our house 20+ some years later. I still think it might be the best toy to actually spawn creativity and imagination. All that to say - I just love Jason Freeny's anatomy of the lego man. Brilliant.
And yes, we are going to Legoland next summer. Anyone been?
Via Likecool
Bookmark time! Apartment Therapy just posted an article featuring the 'Top Ten' online shops for vintage furniture and accessories. Now you know what to do this weekend.
Here's a great little