MANVIL

MANVIL is a small freelance graphic design firm and producer of flashcards for the education of children and adults. We design the way we do because there is beauty in simplicity, and simplicity is never as simple as it sounds.

It is our ambition to provide clients with the best design and product support possible. Our employees are treated like family, with respect and open camaraderie. The well-being of the company depends on it, because if your heart isn’t in it, it ain’t worth a damn.

I don’t like cluttered graphics. They’re not really my thing. I prefer clean, simple, straight forward images built of precision and clean lines.

Alas, some clients do, and if business requires it, cluttered graphics will be made. Putting together imagery that works for the racing industry is not straight forward. Things must be clear, yet able to support the variety of sponsorship logos and advertising. It seems that most rigs in racing, be they jet boats or kids go-carts, have entire body panels painted over with logos. So how does the most important client in the race (the driver) get the word out there? Well it starts with a personal logo smack dab in the center of the hood/cowling/door/escape hatch of whatever it is they are driving.

POW! This is (enter driver’s name here) and I’ll be damned if somebody is going to beat me!

And a little bit of crazy rarely hurts anybody…

With the goings on at SAAB, with the rally on the 14th and whatnot, a new client asked for a simple sticker to display his Oregon based love of Saab. Similar clients may be out there for Washington Saab owners, so we put that graphic together as well.

If cars represent the citizenry of countries (and we’re not suggesting that they ALL do) then the safety minded, enthusiast-driven Saab may well be a major part of Sweden’s image. In a country known for both fun-loving, zestfully adventurous citizens, and a somewhat stoic, solid minded (read: introverted) people, the reputations of Saab and Volvo seem to be plucked from central casting.

“We need somebody straight laced, mindful and safe, they’ll be driving a Volvo”

“We need an intelligent, loose cannon, let’s put them in a Saab”

Perhaps that’s not gibberish the way they’d say it in Hollywood, but it is somewhat close. MANVIL’s client wanted to be able to push their Oregon Saab pride subtly, so when a Saab owner wants to let their freak flag fly they can slap this on the back of their rigs. Here’s to the Oregon Saab owners, may you enjoy this in good health for many more years of driving.

The stickers are proper vinyl, with a UV layer for longevity. They should go on just fine and last for many years to come, which is more than you can say for that awkwardly spelled end table you bought after college. Go SAAB!

Anybody who knows the Creative Strategy Manager at MANVIL  knows he’s a huge fan of Saab. He’s owned nine of them, so we’re pretty sure he’s got the fever, and yet he swears that they were always reliable, comfortable and above all, fun to drive. Truth be told his current passion is a 6500 lb. lump of Japanese offroad prowess made at the ARACO plants in Japan, but his love of Saab remains undiminished.

Five four-doors and four three-doors, and the last four were all turbocharged. He’s walked away from three of them after they had been totalled due to someone else’s poor driving. At least four of them were nearing 200,000 miles before they were sold, now that’s love!

So when the Northwest Saab Owners Club needed a poster for their rally to show off MANVIL had no qualms about putting it together. If you own a Saab, and want to be a part of one of the many January 14th rallies to show your support in this now bankrupt car company, take a look at Outside-Saab.com to see what’s going on in your neck of the woods. If you’re in the Northwest and you want to take a run around Portland, Oregon, meet at atomic auto on the 14th at 12 Noon. If you live in Washington or BC, try to get in touch with the Northwest Saab Owners Club on Facebook. They’re meeting in Fife at Larson Cadillac Saab at 8:30 AM for the convoy down.

We’re almost finishing up the new year in the office, and we’re pretty stoked with how it all came out overall.

This year has been a relatively successful one: The office is still paid for, the heat is still on, and the clients have been great to work with. Projects, have been rewarding and we think they all look good. (We’re biased after all)

So for the year’s culmination we are putting together a fun shirt that we feel sort of sums up our efforts FOR 2011. MANVIL’s “Hang Loose and No Make A” tee is an homage to our home, Hawaii, and if there were such a thing as a battle cry for our office, this is it. We must admit it’s rather a contradiction to call it our battle cry. Screaming is a huge part of “Making A” and is therefor, about as far from “Hanging Loose” as one can get. (Take it up with the boss)

We’ll send these tees to clients, and to family, and if there are any left over perhaps they can be bought, for a price. (Say $15.) Sorry, we’re only making them in Large and Extra-large sizes. If the interest is heavy, perhaps we can make another run further down the road.

mele kalikimaka a e hau’oli makahiki hou! Bring on 2012!

It takes a lot of things to start out in business on your own. Passion, a skill-set, and a client base; the faith that you can move forward each day towards the goal of making things work out for the betterment of your business and your trade; and you have to have a belief that things will work out alright.

A well travelled business owner we know once said “You’ll meet and asshole every day of your life.” and an even wiser sage added to that “make sure it’s not the guy/girl in the mirror.”

With this in mind the graphic displayed is that of a client MANVIL did work for. A client who asked MANVIL to vectorize their drawing. The client later said they loved the finished graphic, and then they took our artwork (the JPEG with a watermark below) and paid an on-line company to vectorize the JPEG. She then refused to pay MANVIL for the work done.

MANVIL made nothing, and although that sucks fiscally, it doesn’t suck all the way.

We got into graphics at MANVIL to make things look better, and looking at the original images provided to us by the client, the final MANVIL graphic is a success. The matching hemisphere lines, subtle thinning on the lower highlight and curiously notched upper and lower apices are balanced in comparison to the preliminary drawing. We think it looks as it should: solid and refined. We even like the design, which is too bad, because we’re not so thrilled with the client right now.

Suffice it to say, the image the former client paid somebody else to vectorize was poorly transferred to their website. It subsequently pixilated badly on their packaging as well, which is too bad, because we’d have made sure that would have looked great. And we like to see our paying client’s succeed.

Karma, she is a fickle mistress.

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The graphic for today is for our client Pete Wilson Stoneworks, and we couldn’t be more proud to put it together for them.

Before MANVIL came to fruition, the boss worked for Pete Wilson Stoneworks, and loved it. Alas, he loved graphics more, but there are few things more fulfilling than creating something out of stone. In fairness, the creation part was left for others, and the boss drove trucks, ran heavy equipment, and lifted lots of heavy things, but that does not change the love we have for things you just can’t get from a computer screen. Graphics and videos don’t have texture, smell, or get into your shoes. There are too few times when you get to create something by hand that will remain in place for 150 some-odd years. That’s the kind of wall that Pete and his employees build.

This shirt’s graphic is an homage to the work that Pete Wilson Stoneworks puts together. Simple, detailed, lasting hard work that should stick around for a very long time.

Thanks Pete Wilson Stoneworks, for the opportunity to produce this series of shirts and hoodies for you. Thanks also for the opportunities to work hard with a great team, run equipment to (and sometimes beyond) its very limit, and the chance to dig those “thankless” trenches in Portland’s beautiful, fragrant, rich dirt.

Cheers to you for many, many more years!

Occasionally there  are things that happen in the funny town I live in that are well meaning, but not entirely thought out.

New recycling rules are among those things.

A few weeks back every resident in the fair and kind county of Multnomah (Portland, Oregon) got a delightfully Governmental looking composting bucket. This drab, brittle little box, dubbed The Hobo’s Lunchbox, came without a set of directions, but there are supposedly rules and this is as I recall hearing them.

Apparently there are special days to unload this tidy little container into another special container, which is to be rolled to the curb with its yellow, blue and grey brethren. On any given Monday one or all of them will be collected by the myriad refuse services which circle my house all week long thanks to a complete and utter failings of any city regulation. My trash is picked up Monday, my neighbor’s trash is picked up Tuesday, the condo across the street is picked up Wednesday, the place by the condo is picked up Thursday, etc. etc… So like the fruit flies which have chosen to call the Northwest home for the winter, our neighborhood is constantly surrounded by hovering garbage trucks. One for recycling, one for yard debris and one for outright trash. Four times a week.

I love that Portland recycles. I’m all for cutting down on the amount of crap that we, as Americans, throw into landfills as spent packaging. I just wonder if it would be possible to ruin only one morning of the week picking up each others detritus. Perhaps… but for now, here’s what I think Portland needs, a merit badge, in order to prove that the city’s inhabitants know how and when to use each of the boxes that the county has provided. I’m not sure I could earn one today, but I will eventually. Here’s a link to how it should work. Thanks Portland!

I can’t say I’m a big fan of protesting, but in these, the United States of America, it is an inalienable right to be able to do so. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That said, we at MANVIL think this officer should made to pay for his heavy handed peacekeeping. Although he might win style points in hell for the cavalier nature with which he maced the UC Davis students, he was in the wrong, and should be subject to a severe reprimand for gross abuse of power… and also for being a dick. He’s not in hell yet, and up here, according to the law of the land, he should be judged by his peers. 

For Thanksgiving 2011, we at MANVIL give thanks for the great bounty afforded us as Americans, and thanks for friends, family, and viewers like you. Happy Thanksgiving!

When busy clients have needs we at MANVIL like to try and help out whichever way possible, and when a favorite client (They’re all favorites really) needed a newsletter there is little question that we want to see them succeed.

The success of our clients not only allows them to use our services more, but our strong relationship allows for MANVIL’s growth as the proverbial word gets out. When atomic auto, Portland’s premier Saab service facility, and Swedish Auto Body chose to put out a quarterly mailer we’re glad the felt comfortable turning to us.

So how do you represent a staff of 7 commited technicians and 6 support staff who have the passion to service anything with four wheels? You throw your voice to their customers in a targetted e-mail, specifically, a program called constant contact. There is no mass-mailing waste of paper, no postman lugging half an hectare of former trees around the neighborhood in paper form, and if a customer isn’t interested in knowing about the goings on of the company they can simply opt out. Driven through the interwebs, there are coupons included for the e-mail savvy to impress upon customers the wants of atomic auto: try to be as green as possible, do paperwork on the screen.

At MANVIL, we’re proud of the work that we’ve done for atomic auto and Swedish Auto Body, and we’re glad to be a part of their continued success.

MANVIL has thankfully been working busily the last few weeks. Client projects have been more frequent and a lot of fun as well. Here’s hoping the work keeps coming in. It’s fun for us, and hopefully entertaining for the reader as well.

Today’s subject is not an exception. SYNTH-BIO Trivia is something we’re proud to have been a part of for years, and they are taking the game to other watering holes, (Which we’re thrilled with because it is hella fun) We’re proud to say that we’ve known these guys for a while, and we applaud their hard work. MANVIL going to stick with the stylish, classy support staff at the Rose and Thistle for the Monday night extravaganza, and we’re glad that Dave from SYNTH-BIO helps make Monday night seem like a Thursday.

Following the theme given to us by the client, we wanted to run with a low-cal horror themed/fifties feel. What better fits with the mindset of the fifties than an old TV? And although color was really introduced to the tube in the 60′s, we think the idea helps get the message across. A little mystery, a little contrast, and a bit of a call to action.

In Portland, SYNTH-BIO plays trivia on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. On Wednesday they conduct Family Friendly Bingo. It’s a great time, run by smart, fun folks, and we’re proud to be able to help the cause. Check out http://www.synth-bio.com for more info.