Fast Forward: it’s now 2011. It was a late Monday afternoon when the call from Quiksilver came into our west coast office. They needed help with a last minute project and asked if we could come in the following morning to discuss. We have a long standing relationship with Quik, so we knew it must of been important. We showed up to the office not knowing exactly what was going to be needed. Nothing like last minute, but we were up for whatever curveball tossed our way. Cutting to the chase, apparently Pirate Surf had been shelved in the mid 90’s; the product design and POV had been folded into Quiksilver’s line as a whole. The brand was “shelved” meaning the brand stopped producing product, and ceased distribution, and was basically put away for another day. Well, Quik wanted to bring it back. We were charged with re-animating the brand in preparation for some large meetings the following week. Tic Toc, time’s a ticking, we have one week.

A few additional twists:

1. We needed to make sure the brand could speak year round, a four season offering.
2. We needed to expand beyond just “Surf” – it needed to apply to the culture as a whole, and be accepted in the moto, music, surf, skate, and snow arenas as well.
3. The brand needed to speak to male and female audience
4. At a glance, the brand needed to represent the mainstream general perception of action sport culture and it MUST come across as authentic
5. And finally, it must be a modern day version of Pirate Surf as the days of typical grunge are long gone. So, what does Pirate look like and stand for, both now and for the next 5 plus years?

Before heading back to the office we made a run to the local Trader Joes to pick up some PIRATE’s Booty. We knew that with this time frame, we’d need to maximize our eating efficiencies for the next several days.

We rolled up our sleeves and got right to work. We ran it through our traditional process but modified for speed. We did our homework, both on the history of the brand, its competition, and current market trends given how Quik thought it should be positioned. We developed a very poignant creative brief in one days time, defining target audiences, unique positioning, values, personality, etc.

We launched into full creative mode pulling swipe and inspiration from wherever we could in that short time frame. It was actually quite liberating to work on such a stringent timeline. It was almost like a mini escape and everyone in the office was leaving the team alone for the most part. They were respecting “the code.” The biggest inspiration we had in our arsenal was a book called “Fucked Up and Photocopied” which showcases the “instant art of the punk rock movement.”

We really gravitated to these gems:

We wanted the look and feel to capture the life of this youth culture and energy, with a subtle nod to a Pirate’s life (Pirate to us represented unbridled freedom). We wanted a weathered feel, bold use of color, but a zerox monochromatic look which lent itself to high contrast black and white imagery, almost disheveled but not. Once we honed in on this certain look and had our overarching concept developed, too many sleepless nights began to set in.

Somehow we got a little “Captain” in us. We found ourselves talking like pirates, quoting pirates, discussing the hottest pirate actresses, and best pirate jokes, all the while playing surf videos in the background and skating the hallways late at night. We even earned nicknames along the way, for example, senior designer Justin was known as: “Captain Calico J-Beard”, and senior copywriter Kyle became: “Black Long Dolphin” for which reasons we wont get into (but lets just say it had to do with too much rum and a tattoo parlor).

Ultimately we solved the puzzle and delivered one kick ass brand. We not only delivered a presentation, we took it one step further and fully developed the brand. It was complete with all the trimmings, brand guidelines, packaging, instore, outdoor, gorilla strategies, web templates, and an ad campaign to boot. Quiksilver was set, and Pirate was well Tee’d up for re-launch.

Check out the full case study here and relish in the Pirate life: http://www.160over90.com/
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…and wasn’ really going to post these but what the hell.

A couple of side notes, incase you were wondering:

1. Everybody wants to be a Pirate. Even my 2 year old son. Argh! (he does a great impression, i’m still getting the image)
2. the top pirate quote at least in the office during the time: “… you are without doubt the worst pirate I have ever heard of … Ahhh, but you have heard of me…”
3. the top pirate joke: There was a pirate who wore a steering wheel on his belt buckle. One day, a landlubber asked him why. The pirated replied “I don’t know, but it’s drivin’ me nuts.”
4. hottest pirate actress: Penelope Cruz

It’s been a crazy summer at 160over90. There’s been miles of travel (what’s up Los Angeles, London, South Bend), plenty of fun, and a lot of great work, thinking, and collaboration. But before we leave the dog days of summer behind (it’s been one of the hottest Philadelphia summers on record) we wanted to share some of our most recent client work.

We’ve added 11 new clients to our site and over the next few weeks The Boomerang Table will feature a behind-the-scenes view into the work of each. Get your phones, iPads, and computers ready and let us know what you think.

Mercedes-Benz

University of Notre Dame

Maverik Lacrosse

Michael Ryan Architects

Hang Ten

Yume Ume

Tectron

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Nike Australian Open 2011

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pirate Surf

British director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scottland”, “Touching the Void”) asked people around the world to document important moments of their lives on July 24 2010 and upload those videos to youtube. More than 80.000 people from 192 countries participated and submitted more than 4500 hours of digital film.

Using that material Macdonald then, together with his editor Joe Walker, cut a film that’s partly happy, partly sad, and sometimes thrilling. Produced is the movie by “Blade Runner” director Ridley Scott. Starting this July it will hit theaters in the US.

Last week, I was going through the snapshots I took during my visit to Greensboro, Alabama and was thrilled to make this connection to Walker Evans — that Greensboro is indeed one of the towns that Evans documented for much of his acclaimed collaboration with writer James Agee in 1936. Their collaboration resulted in the honest and revealing book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and grew out of an assignment that the two accepted from Fortune magazine to produce a magazine feature on the conditions among white sharecropper families in the South.

WALKER EVANS: “Storefront, Greensboro, Alabama.” Summer 1936.

WALKER EVANS: “County seat of Hale County, Alabama.” 1935/1936.

Above: Greensboro’s Main Street, then and now. Much of the architecture remains unchanged.

- – -

In the spirit of Evans, below is some of the inspiring signage I encountered while exploring Greensboro last week — a graphic designer’s gold mine! Fun fact: Evans went on to teach graphic design (and photography) at the Yale University School of Art from 1964 to 1974.)

Open Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm, The Book Thing is a space you can visit to pick up used books. For free! From the F.A.Q. section on the website,

Are the books really free?
Yup.
Really?
Yes.
Absolutely free?
Yes.
What’s the catch?
All the books you take have to be stamped “not for resale”. That’s it.
What is the suggested donation?
A smile.

The building never seems to end as you turn a corner and discover yet another room with densely populated bookshelves lining the walls. The books are organized by subject, but this experience will still appeal to the treasure-hunting book finder as there are additional bins along the floor to dig through to find that classic novel you’ve been wanting to read. And if you’re a graphic designer like myself, you may gravitate towards certain aesthetics of more unfamiliar books for their moments of design ingenuity:

Bring a tote bag and be sure to pick up some books (or donate books!) the next time you’re in B’More:

The Book Thing of Baltimore, Inc.
3001 Vineyard Lane
Baltimore, MD 21218

Travel junkies have mountaintop temples in Nepal.

Elvis impersonators have Graceland.

Comic book nerds — as well as a lucky few from 160over90 — have Comic Con.

Comic Con, a mecca for anyone who’s ever picked up a comic book, figurine, or video game console, attracts tens of thousands of fans and fanatics every year. Naturally, with the influx of zombies and monsters and vampires in the media these days, a few of us from 160over90 attended the conference in the name of (ahem) research.

Our time at New York’s Javitz Center (filled to the brim with the curious hordes) was a remarkably analog-meets-digital experience: one that simultaneously honored where comic books have been, and where they’re going. On the one hand, there are the old school comic books set up on tables covered in vintage superman sheets, sketching artists with their portfolios on display, and the dueling monstrosities: Marvel vs. DC Comics. On the other hand, there’s the audio-visual overload: Michael Jackson-themed video games, multi-player garage band competitions, lectures on gaming techniques, a fake bog where you can perform a black light search for a lost yeti, a seven-foot tall transformer who stalks his way across the convention floor.

Among other things, comic books have taught us that sometimes pictures get the job done when words aren’t necessary. So rather than listening to us ramble on, check out our photos instead. (courtesy of Justin “Aqualad” LaFontaine)

THE OLD SCHOOL:

THE NEW SCHOOL:

All good things must come to an end:

Glockenspiels, graphic patterns on Pyrex bakeware, the Work in Progress Society, cardboard sculpture, and foxes! Fine company for an article I wrote for the fifth issue of Uppercase Magazine – a visual survey of the design and aesthetics of DuPont’s marketing of synthetic fabrics from the 1920’s to the early 80’s. The history of the development of synthetic fabrics is a fascinating nexus of science, industry, design, advertising, fashion and culture. In turn, the same goes for focusing specifically on the promotion of the fabrics themselves. It is a rich core sample of prevailing trends in design, typography, advertising illustration and photography, etc over the decades…

Uppercase Magazine? Let me say again – The clue to what distinguishes Uppercase Magazine lies in its motto “A magazine for the creative and curious” It’s the “curious” – It accounts for the joyful, inclusive sense of collaboration and sharing that pervades the whole shebang. The magazine reads like a conversation between like-minded folk riffing on the impossibly cool thing they’ve drawn, thought, photographed, collected, discovered, etc. No lofty curatorial snobbishness or hipster veneration of the mindlessly shocking or willfully ugly for these cats – just a democratic spirit and a celebration of beautiful things.

The magazine, as a project and physical object, is the very embodiment of what it celebrates. It works on a collaborative publishing model, and is designed and produced with great care and craft. Feels great in the hand. The covers so far have been stunning. The whole Uppercase venture, gallery, books, blog etc… seem of all of a piece. Well worth it. Explore here. Subscribe! Subscribe!

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

Just a beautiful documentary by the good folks at Mother NY, in partnership with their client Stella Artois. It’s so nice when something like this gets made just because it should, and the agency and client both get it. Doesn’t need to be anything more than that.