Welcome yourself back to the ATARI 2600, one of the definitive moments in both home entertainment and interactive communication in our modern world. In these early years (1970’s, 80’s) of video game distribution, there was a bit of a learning curve. What should be done about advertising and branding these games we’ve got to sell, said the interactive masters of the day, the games are fun, but there’s no way we can use these little pixels as the covers of their packages! ZAP! There was a split. In this age came the strange world of describing not what was actually in the game,* but what you were supposed to imagine while you were playing it. *In most cases, that is.
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Being a boy in the late 80’s and early 90’s meant that I played with action figures. Like most the kids I knew, I had TMNTurtles, legos, and all that fun stuff, plus a bunch of He-Man figures. I don’t know where they came from, I never even watched He-Man! But I know the characters because I had the figures. The man who did the poster print you see above and below knew his stuff. He was an AVID He-Man fan. He knows so much about He-Man that he hypothesized the history of He-Man and did this print: “Mr. Villians Class of 1983.”

Classy.
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When winter hits the midwest, the boards go away. I’m talking about midwest USA of course, but this sort of thing happens all over the place. This particular brand of skateboard gets my engine revving. I found out about it from the designer Francis Pelletier who’s spearheaded the design for the brand. La Vie! Look at the class.
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A reduction in the excellent junk. That’s what this is all about. I am a collector of things. Tiny things, mostly, things that can fit on the tiny shelves we’ve got up in this apartment. The tiny things I collect come from the drawers, books, and boxes of people’s houses. They come from stores, from storage units, from under the boots of the average man or lady. I collect things that a design conscious person would blink their eyes three times at, in appreciation, adoration, or disgust. In this cleaning transition, photos were taken, one each for all of the 141 items taken off the shelf – several months of collecting.
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The stash is here. Cliff Chiang’s sent us in a box of fabulous flats. Prints from the streets of comicdom. Everything we need to start our insane Cliff Chiang collection! First, a set of Atomic Bombshells postcard-sized prints. Then, an insanely colorful signed print of the whole gang from Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Mortality (fear the Nazi ape.) Next, two more brilliant prints: Batman over Gotham and a totally bad warrior woman battling a minotaur that even if you don’t recognize, you’ll have to love. And the crowning jewels: prints of both the Electra/Flashdance record cover AND my favorite Batgirl/Purple Rain.
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Thanks to well-written fellow collector of lovely ideas Yorath Roth from Letters from Berlin, I’ve re-discovered my favorite sticker from my travels overseas! I live in Minneapolis now, and my trip was to England (Alnwick, London), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), and Italy (Rome). More than likely I found this in either Rome or Paris. I believe it was Paris. There was a bit more graffiti there than in Rome if I’m not mistaken.

In celebration of this discovery, this post is a small compilation of photos of the stickers I put up in Paris myself! Yay!
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Hey baby get up on this right here. This project is titled “Don’t Believe The Type”* and if simple looks are first looks are simple looks are final words, this is tight. Discover how explosively 3D and graphicky-modern type can be in these examples. I’d LOVE to have a stack of stickers of these amalgamations. Designed by none other than Marta Cerdà Alimbau herself. Such glitz, such magnificence.
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This post is a collection of hundreds of Star Wars photos from the set, of the movies, and from the promotional shots of the 70’s and 80’s. Doesn’t matter how you feel about Star Wars, it’s affected the way you work. The world you live in today is the world you live in today because of Star Wars. You’d better believe that. Its basically like this: Luke Skywalker: New York, Princess Leia: Los Angeles, Han Solo and Darth Vader: Minneapolis.
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Here’s how you carve out your little piece of the money. You find your nitch FIRST. Then you think about what they do. Crazies. Hippies. Weirdos. They need to feed their cats. Then need to make their cats into crazy cats. So what should you do? You should make a catnip brand called Cosmic Catnip. And put a crazy cat on the bag. Crazy cat!
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For some of you, this is your second time hearing about the confederate flag Obama situation. For the rest of you, hello there! Get ready for a strange journey! Right here we’ve got one real-as-can-be, genuine as the day is long Obama stars n’ bars flag. For most of you, the instant reaction is going to be of disgust: the flag of the confederate states of america has and will always mean slavery and racism. But for the rest, you’re looking at another thing: why is Shepard Fairey’s HOPE image sitting next to that symbol. This can’t be real!

Oh it’s real, mama, it’s really real.
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So lemme tell you this. These signs I have right here are from an old liquor store. You can tell because they’ve got alcohol all over them. I mean logos. Also I know because I got them from a liquor store. Take a look at the genius cleverness included in every card. And the type’s pretty pretty too!
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