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!

Well, we've officially outgrown our little studio and have just broken ground on a new one. Before we pack up, I thought I'd shoot a few random items in the office - dust, cobwebs and all.

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.

Calling all poster fans/geeks/enthusiasts: this is a must-have book. 1000 Indie Posters, by the great John Foster, is out now and features a cool die-cut cover and work from nearly every star in the contemporary poster world. We're honored to have a few pieces included amongst such great talent.

We're honored to be featured in the January/February issue of HOW Magazine.

Here's 4 new (ish) books that we've been featured in recently: 1000 Indie Posters by John Foster (out in January), The Graphic Design Exercise Book by Carolyn Knight and Jessica Glaser, Typo Lyrics by Slanted and 1000 Supreme CD Designs by PageOne (This one actually came out in '08 but we spaced on it). Now you know what to get your favorite uncle for the holidays.

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.

Do you remember real mailboxes? How about real mail? What about that feeling of excitement as you opened up that rusty old mailbox in hopes that something would be addressed to YOU?

It seems like much of that is lost nowadays. A letter addressed to us now means we probably owe someone money.

Well, we miss that feeling. So, we decided to start The Lil' Happy Invisible Creature S.A.S.E. Club. Inspired by our youth - when the simple task of addressing an envelope to ourselves, licking a few stamps and patiently waiting a few weeks could mean receiving anything from a signed baseball card from spring training to various stickers from our favorite skateboard company.

It's real simple. Send us a self-addressed stamped envelope and we'll fill it with goodies. Put 2 stamps on your return envelope and we'll fill it with more.

However, we thought we'd make it a bit more fun and interactive. Regardless of your artistic ability, we ask that your envelope addressed to us be creatively designed or illustrated. No rules, anything goes - and we'll post the coolest ones on the Lil' Happy Twitter page.

So, that's it! Oh, and we figured we should set some ground rules and answer a few questions. Just in case.

DEADLINE: September 1st, 2010 Please send us your S.A.S.E. by that date. We hope to do this once a year, but since we don't know the volume we'll be receiving, we have to shut off the valve at some point.

Please send your envelopes to: The Lil' Happy Invisible Creature S.A.S.E. Club, P.O. Box 375, Seahurst, WA 98062

Q: I can't draw to save my life. What should I do? A: Like we mentioned, it's regardless of your ability. C'mon, it'll be fun!

Q: What are you going to send us? A: We're not telling. It'll be fun though. We promise.

Q: When should we expect our envelope back? A: After the deadline sometime. It could take awhile as we also run a full-time studio over here. If you send it, it will come. A little patience.

Q: I don't live in the U.S., can I still participate? A: Probably not, due to customs. However, we aren't international mail professionals, if you can find a way that works via USPS, we'll definitely send it back! If it involves anything more than dropping it in a mailbox, we won't be able to pull it off. Sorry.

Q: Can I send you more than one envelope? A: No, sorry.

Q: Can I send a poster tube? How about a large document envelope or soft pack? A: Nice try. Let's keep this old school. Legal sized envelopes would be the biggest/best option.

Any more questions? Feel free to email us at lilhappy@invisiblecreature.com

Our Conan O'Brien and My Morning Jacket posters have been added to the shop.

21 years after my first class with Mrs. George, my high school art teacher, I'm coming back to say hi. She was/is an amazing teacher and played a large role for me in pursuing art as a career. Because of that, I thought it would be fun to create a poster for the occasion. Looking forward to catching up after 17 years.

The sun is shining in Seattle and it appears that spring has come a bit early (if you're local, you're just as thankful as us). We also happen to have a ton of posters sitting in flat files that we'd like to send to you kind people. So, it occured to us that this would be a perfect time to slash prices (most posters $8-$10) and make room for some new art. We've been making posters for 8 years now and decided to put many in the 'blowout bin' until they are gone. Grab them now as this sale will only last a few weeks.

As 2010 is quickly approaching with new projects and new ideas, we didn't want to neglect 2009 in this Holiday rush. It's been our best year yet (It seems like we get to say that every year) at the IC and we just wanted to say THANK YOU. To our beloved clients, those who purchase our work in various ways, our faithful blog subscribers (almost 10K feeds?!), our Twitter followers, our extremely talented and inspiring peers who push us every day, and everyone else who has dropped us a comment or thrown love our way. We are extremely thankful (especially in this economy) to be doing what we love for a living. It's so much fun to "work" here - and we have many, many people to thank for that. Merry Christmas + Happy New Year to you all ...

Can you tell we love our new printer? Two new prints added to the shop today. Isle Of This Town & The Lonely King are available for your Aunt Nadine's living room, right above the '76 Magnavox.

Grain Edit (Dave Cuzner and crew) have been very generous to us over the years - responsible for putting our work in front of many fresh faces. So when they asked if we'd like to create GE's first ever T-shirt design, we quickly obliged. As many of you know, Dave has quite the book collection (we've been known to collect a few over here as well), so the idea of a few critters lending an ear to a story about our favorite blog seemed quite fitting. And with today's announcement from The Times, the story seems that much sweeter.

We've had an incredible year at IC and feel like passing on a little love. So, we've gotten drunk on eggnog, whipped up a graphic and logged into the blog. From now until next Monday, December 21st, we are including a FREE set of our IC Throwback Series with any order $20 or over. Please note that we have a limited amount, so when they're gone, they're gone.

'Time Will Tell' and 'Prized Possessions' are now (finally) available exclusively through Velocity! Each print is a whopping 17" x 22" (with a 1" border for framing) and is printed on beautiful German Etching Hahnenmühle Fine Art paper. Hand signed, limited edition run of 50.