Today we bring you a project that we’ve been working on with Joe Rogan for quite some time now. It’s been under wraps for over a year but today we’re finally launching the site and the new line, Higher Primate.
It’s funny, we’re launching with 4 tees and it seems like, to the outsider, “hey, that’s easy enough. slap graphics on 4 tees and throw up a webstore, right?” But in reality, a lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into the creation of this line and the initial tees over the past year. From getting the designs just right to going through just about every blank garment manufacturer we could get our hands on, to dialing in the printed samples, developing the special hang-tags, designing and developing the site, building out the webstore with GoMerch, and everything in between.
We’re honored that Joe trusted us enough to work on the design, branding, and development of his baby.. a line of clothing that tells quite the story and is inspired by everything from the teachings of Terrance McKenna and his experimentation with Hallucinogens to Einstein’s research in relativity.. more of which will be revealed as the onion peels.
We’re stoked to be working with Jimmy Eat World again this year on the development of their new merch line. New record, Invented, is coming in September, and we’re currently working with the band, management, and their merch company on developing the goods for tour, the online store, and retail shops. So far it’s looking like the best round of Jimmy Eat World merch yet…
Stay tuned for more info and product shots. For now, check out the first tee and sticker that’s been released as part of the online store’s album pre-order packages. Pickup the CD package here, or the Vinyl package here.
We’re pleased to be doing merchandise design and development for Crystal Castles. The LA show last night at the Echoplex blew out of the merch before the band even went on stage. The pieces we’ve designed for them were collaborations with the band and our printing partner absolutely NAILED the prints. This is gonna be fun…
As you may have guessed, CC has a new record coming out and the blogs are blowing up about it. A few of those links are here for your reading enjoyment:
Black Eye Tee - a recreation of a tee made for the band by a retailer in South America.
Sad Face Tee - Classic.
Doe Deer Tee - Image and layout supplied by the band, we freaked it and treated it for apparel and printed with the softest print you’ve ever seen. Turned out great.
We are proud to have recently designed a custom tee for Joe Rogan which he wore for the taping of his new comedy special at the Southern Theatre in Columbus, OH.
The special will air on SPIKE TV June 20th. Watch that shit!!!!!
This was part design, part development, all for a good cause. Mraz is a good friend and long standing merchandise development / consulting client of ours, and Rock The Vote is a new friend of ours through the Beasties posters we did for the Get Out And Vote tour and the Inauguration Show. We put the two together to help raise a bit of money for Rock The Vote’s continuing efforts, and give the Mraz fans who are also Obama supporters a way to represent.
We designed this paying homage the hand sketch illustrations by David Shrigley used in the current Mraz album packaging for “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things.” This is a limited edition tee that should sell out pretty quick so if you want one, be sure to go HERE quick to pick it up!
We had the pleasure of spending the last year or so developing Jason’s new photography book - A Thousand Things - under his direction. This was quite a project actually, sifting through literally thousands of Polaroids to come up with the collection showcased here, sourcing production, running sales projections, assisting in the marketing and distribution development, overseeing production, and much more..
I gotta say, developing a book like this is a LOT more work than we anticipated, and the timelines are insanely long, but we think it turned out great - a really clean, solid book that we’re all very proud of. Only 5000 copies were printed on this first pressing and it’s available now from Jason’s webstore, Amazon.com, on the current Mraz store, and ventually bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles.
You can find out more information and see a preview of the contents on the book’s official page (which we also developed the look & feel for), athousandthingsbook.com.
Big thanks to Bill Silva, Jason, the entire BSM crew, the guys over at America’s Printers, and Graham Nash for trusting us with this project!
The first shoe from the Hooves line we’ve been developing is finally available! THE BEAST can be ordered over on the Hooves site and will be on shelves at a bunch of stores nationwide by the end of the week.
As you may or may not know, we’ve been working on this project for about 2 years now, designing everything from packaging to print ads, the shoes themselves (with the help of Joe Babcock at Gravis) to the website.. if it’s design and it relates to Hooves, we’ve done it. Not to mention the fact that we’re brand managing, heading up the marketing efforts, doing most of the PR, running the events.. I guess you could say The Uprising LLC IS Hooves. In a way.
Thanks to everyone’s support as of late. Bobby of at The Hundreds, Hypebeast, Blabbermouth, Roadrunner Records, Trivium, Nuclear Blast Records, Prosthetic Records, Maria at Adrenaline PR, the whole Gravis team, and Nick and Dave. It’s just beginning!!
This was just a fun project that started with Shifty wondering if we should do something a little custom back before ESP&G came out. Part development and part design, we built this from scratch and walked it all the way through production. It’s been in development for a little while, dialing in all the little extras, but it’s finally available! We love it.. the CAD here doesn’t really do it justice, but once we get a real sample picture we’ll post that. the details, banding and weight are key…
Buy it now on the Foos Online Store while supplies last.. or grab it at Wembley, or the upcoming US dates in July.
Another great collab with the Foos.. this time with our friends over at Johnson Motors. This one came out of a mutual respect and admiration really - it was sort of one of those “perfect fits” you always hope for. The tees turned out amazing.. and this is just the beginning.
The process here was rather organic. Worked with the band on the look they wanted to capture, coordinated the art direction with Johnson Motors, and then went back and forth for awhile in the revision and approval process.
There’s a new set of tees, an INSANE old school canvas jacket, and a limited edition Wembley tee coming soon. Thanks to Sean over at Johnson Motors for the great vintage design work, and the entire team over at JM for dealing with our crazy delivery deadlines.
TASK: Create a Design Contest to engage the fan base, encourage creativity, develop new fan-generated merchandise pieces for the upcoming album cycle, and spark online interest in “new happenings” as part of the early album setup online marketing campaign.
SOLUTION: Created a custom “Design Contest ‘08″ Microsite and “Backstage” Content Management System [archived here] based around the existing Official Website design and aesthetic. The microsite supplied the fan base with the call to action and all details on the contest and submission process. Contestants used this microsite to submit their entries, which were placed into a database and immediately posted to the “Backstage” Content Management System. The “Backstage” was a password protected CMS which allowed Jason and his management to login and vote on each individual entry. Entries were sorted based on an average of all votes to easily determine the winning entries.
OUTCOME: Over 650 unique submissions were received, and because of the easy to use “Backstage” CMS system, winners were selected in a matter of days and instantly posted to the site. Winning submissions were instantly taken into production and under our watchful eye have been produced and are currently being rolled out on tour and the Jason Mraz Webstore.
Another development project form back in ‘07. This one came together after meeting Lucero down at ASR.. John Silva, the band’s manager, was riding Black Label Duane Peters Emergency decks pretty much exclusively at the time, and Lucero was really into the idea of doing a band deck with “the right band.” They’d actually never done a music collab before and after a bit of brainstorming, the Sonics seemed like a perfect fit.
The artwork for this one came from the old Teenage Riot artwork Thurston dug up and really lent itself to the slightly wider Emergency decks. Plus, the guys who ride the Emergency decks tend to be a bit older and really grew up with the band.
After a few meetings to iron out a deal and running a sample deck, a limited run of these came off the presses. It was about 300 in total..
(Little interesting side note.. We gave Scotty over at The Hundreds one of the only slimmer, non-Emergency decks produced that didn’t go to the band or management (we kept one of course!).. So dude, you better treat that thing right!!))
Back in ‘07 we worked with our long-time clients the Foo Fighters and new friends at Billabong to create on of the first Signature Series Co-Op Boardshorts. RHCP did one at the same time, and both were so successful it’s launched an entirely new series for Billabong with shorts with Wolfmother and Metalica being released recently.
We worked hand-in-hand with the Foos and Billabong to put together the deal, develop the initial design sketches, direct the Billabong designers, walk the short through production, and oversee all aspects of the marketing campaign.
Big thanks to Graham Stableberg and Rob McCarty over at Billabong for helping make this happen, and the Foos for trusting us with the project. This was a blast!
This was a really interesting project. Beck had been working with a number of different artist on random commissions and album packaging concepts for The Information. Genevieve Gauckler being one of them. Genevieve and Meghan over at Jeremyville had been discussing the possibility of doing another Sketchel print and approached Beck with the idea.
He was into it, and after many emails and calls between Sydney, Paris and LA, we finally arrived at this limited edition shoulder bag.
We worked with Jeremyville to develop this smaller version of their original bag after have a sample of the larger bag sent over and feeling it was just WAY too big. Meghan was really great in developing this smaller bag, and the rest is history. We worked closely with management and Jeremyville to oversee the sample production, to make sure the print came out perfectly, and to get the bag into some special hands and shops around the world.
We love Jeremyville. They were so great to work with and this bag turned out to be a really great addition to their solid artist series Sketchels. Thanks guys!
