Lunchmeat Underpants
New Stuff and Inspiration
Giving back to Greece
As the Olympics wind down, creative juggernaut Mother has decided to launch a campaign of goodwill, attempting to shift the nation’s Olympic excitement towards the situation in Greece. It is, after all, where the Olympics were born. The campaign called F**k This I’m Off to Greece is trying to get Brits to buy (funny) shirts and donate to ailing country through the dedicated Facebook page. With so many people hurting there during their economic havoc, it seems like a great thing to do.
While we always support doing a good thing to help people out, we just really thought this stuff was pretty funny.
We like beer. And good design
Lately we’ve tried a few of the Uinta Brewing beers, and we’ve been pleased with them. But we were drawn to them by the label design (of course). It’s great seeing better and better labels behind the glass in the beer cooler these days.
They’ve also got a nifty website as well:
This is how we eat our cereal:
Yep, we eat our cereal in one of these bowls. Sure, it leaks a little, but we get bacon at the end. Worth it.
More Denver Water
At the beginning of the summer Denver Water asked folks to use less water. While the message seemed to resonate with Denver residents, the summer was long and loaded with record-breaking heat. We knew we needed to give the people some more information. We needed to give them actual ways to use less water. We needed to break out the pinwheels.
We managed to get media companies to allow us to install pinwheels on bus shelters, and that was no easy feat. Considering something like this has never been done before in Denver (it’s currently not legal to put anything moving on a billboard, or we would have done these there as well), it was a bit tricky getting these things approved. But after much wrangling, we were successful. We built 16 custom bus shelter pieces, and had to manufacture new plexiglass for each one. We then tested and retested hardware to find the best solution for attaining maximum spin. The answer: good ball bearings.
Be on the lookout, there’s 16 of these spinning, sparkling, shimmering, water-use-recommending bad boys lurking all around Denver. If you can’t tell we’re pretty excited about them. Please check back soon- we’re working on a ‘making of’ video, replete with footage of the spinning action.
Also, the second installment of this ‘bring the people ways to save water’ mission is the Taller Grass board. We learned that if you let your grass grow just a little longer than you usually would, and you cut it just a little longer than usual, you will actually save water. We knew we should let people know. We maximized as much extension height as possible (this was dictated by the outdoor companies) above the board to help emphasize this point.
Denver to the Rescue
It’s time that we Denverites get out there and help out our friends down south. Colorado Springs, it’s residents and it’s economy have taken a hit from the Waldo Canyon fire. So go get a buy one get one free admission ticket to their attractions at your nearest Good Times Burgers and Frozen Custard, and go have a fun day in the Springs. And you’ll be helping the community while you do it.
The ticket is good at the following attractions: Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Cave of the Winds, Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, The Airplane Restaurant, Arkansas River Tours, Cripple Creek Jail Museum, Ghost Town Museum, Noah’s Ark Whitewater Rafting & Adventure Company, May Natural History Museum, Manitou Cliff Dwellings, Avanti Ballroom, and Western Museum of Mining & Industry.
‘Denver to the Rescue’, sponsored by Good Times Burgers and Frozen Custard, is a benefit to help revive the Colorado Springs economy and provide support for the Waldo Canyon fire victims. From August 1 -31, 100% of the funds collected in this donation box for ‘Denver to the Rescue’ will go directly to the Waldo Canyon Fire Victim Assistance Fund administered by Pikes Peak United Way.
USA Basketball logo
One thing we’ve picked up on this Olympics is that there is no one set uniform or USA logo guideline. It seems you can wear just about whatever your team or sport has decided. Or whatever your sponsor creates for you. This seems to take away from the unity of Team USA a little bit, but hey, what do we know?
We noticed yesterday that the US did a great job with the basketball uniforms for this Olympics. The chest USA logo is really interesting, and seems to almost infer flight. The type nerds in us really just love that the letter forms are custom. Of course, this creates a little bit of oddness in the widths, and the “U” and “A” could line up with the angles in the “S” a bit better, but overall the geometry of the letter forms play off one another nicely and almost look like an arrow pointing upwards.
The Creative Director of Nike Basketball apparel, Darrin Crescenzi established a design vision for the uniform— a principle Darrin called the “flicker effect,” wherein a single neutral body color is visible while a player is inactive, with a flash of pop color revealed during a defensive stance, dunk or jump shot — inspired by the defensive behaviors of certain wild fish and birds.
When this design was released earlier this year, it was met with lukewarm reception, but compared to most of the other uniforms worn by US athletes, this one seems one of the most cleanly designed ones to us. This one, not so much.
Bike Art Project
With the USA Pro Challenge scheduled to roll through Colorado August 20 – 26, DIA, VISIT DENVER, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and race organizers joined forces for the second year in a row to commission local artists for a temporary, sports-themed art display. Plus Gallery’s Ivar Zeile asked prominent Denver-based artists and non-profit arts organizations to transform 13 bicycles into unique, stand-alone works of art, celebrating a selection of the teams that will compete in the race. The art is finished and will be on display at DIA through the month of August and can be found on top of baggage carousels, located on both the east and west sides of Jeppesen Terminal : Level 5.
The Brief:
12 creative teams commissioned to turn 12 bikes into works of art. Each team was given a bike and assigned a professional cycling team. The creative challenge was to interpret the team, its riders and sponsors in a conceptual manner.
Creative Rationale:
We love bikes. It’s something about the freedom and exhilaration. The candy like coating of shiny paint. The smell of grease and rubber. We enjoy them us much now as we did when the training-wheels first came off. We ride them on the road and on the trail. For exercise, transportation and plain old fun. Bikes are our favorite toys. Radio Shack was the perfect team for us. We were inspired by the cool remote controlled toys we got from them when we were kids. So we decided to turn our USA Pro Cycling Challenge bike into one by packaging it up in a big ole box.
Special thanks to design intern Ross Ahlvin, who provided support on the design side and Tim Sukle, on the fabrication side of things.