MANVIL

A long while back we saw a video with Jeremy Irons acting in the persona of Klaus Von Bulow. In the clip he says, in a tone well studied and decidedly vainglorious, “Fashion should be fun”.

For best effects in mimicking the proper enunciation, keep your lower pre-molars attached to your upper canines. (It never hurts to raise your eyebrows and look down your nose either.)

What we’re getting at here is that if Fashion should be fun, so should everything else. So today, we take a shot at old school branding. Branding put together as an homage to a bygone era, a time when manufacturing was a big time grit and nasty. No clean suits, no goggles, no rubber gloves and sure as hell no oxygen tanks.

This is a tip of the hat to a time when stacks belched, workers carried tools to work with their hands and a three tonne era-specific super-car had a blisteringly fast 90HP motor… that got them all the way to 90 MPH.

MANVIL has a special love for the huge industrial. We love machines, we love tools and we’re kinda falling for this graphic.

If you want great graphics to be placed on your car, truck, boat or even your fine kids racing cart, give the boys t KolorWerx a call. We’re pretty sure they make beautiful stuff.

That said, and with real sadness that we can’t back Green Bay. Go Pats.

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…

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!

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!

If you’re lucky, you just might create a graphic that you yourself love. It could be a large graphic for a client, or a simple graphic that works just for you, but when you’ve built something that you yourself actually enjoy, well, at that point who the hell cares what anybody else thinks.

I mention this because over and above all else, MANVIL believes that good graphics rule. If the creativity works for you, and the image made inspires a positive reaction, (or a negative one if that’s what you were aiming for) then you’ve found joy making something you dig. Muy Bueno! That should be what it’s all about. No!?

Yeah, times are tight, graphics jobs in this town are few and far between, with a lot of competition for every opening, but it’s not at all selfish, or delusional to like your own work. It’s selfish and delusional if you like your own work and don’t put it out there.

Here’s to Ted’s Salsa Lab, may they move towards the competitive circuit! They’ve got a logo MANVIL would go to bat with.

Initially the client request was for a black and white image, and it was good.

No really it was. The idea was to make a VERY easily printable logo that would not only grab attention, but also get the point across. What could be simpler than black and white. (Our vote: not a lot.)

So when the idea of coloring the image came up, we’re pretty sure the client said “easy peasy”. It wasn’t so cut and dry. Sure, “just put color in it” might have been the client’s response, but from a graphic designer’s standpoint, it wasn’t such a breeze.

Colors have qualities that work with one another as easily as they work against each other. The blue that works so well on the left might draw undue attention or recognition from the tan on the beach, the green on the grass and trees, or the red that provides the shape of the liner.

In honesty, we at MANVIL were against the colorization at first. Subsequently, we like how it pops and plays witht he eye.

The colors represent the vibrant allure of the Caribbean. It displays the vivid lifestyles of all the sea-going Caribbean folk who dwell within the non-pollution zone, while promoting the “don’t dump garbage in the sea” message.

There are thousands of beautiful places to visit in the Caribbean. Hopefully this image, backed by the multi-nationally signed and supported MARPOL treaty will get the idea to every boater in the region that there are facilities on shore to deal with rubbish. It’s not OK to simply toss stuff overboard.

We wonder how the image would look really large?

Caveat emptor means something like, “let the buyer beware’ and I’m not sure why that phrase hasn’t been on the tongues of all the pundits in the United States since Wall Street put the wood to the economy, but it is still something we hold dear at the MANVIL office.

When a client comes to us, we realize their money is often hard earned, and it needs to last them a while, so the graphic that we do for them is made the way they want it. Because they are paying for it.

Granted, we don’t want to show everybody what the client bought, but we can get close. Our client, who hasn’t actually ever bashed Sea-slugs with volleyballs, or vice-versa, has never wantonly harmed a sea creature in their life, unless, of course, that sea creature ate one of his lures. And at that point, all creatures within limits and size parameters are fare game, and good eating in the Pacific Northwest. (Yes, even the sea-slugs. And yes, we at MANVIL have eaten sea slugs. Raw, ‘picked from the coral on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon by a large boned sarong clad Samoan lady’ sea-slugs. Chewy, salty, chewy sea-slugs.)

So here is a brief peek at the business end of the client’s graphics. They had an idea, and we were able to put that idea together for them graphically. It’s not Charley Harper or Paul Rand, but it WAS in the client’s budget and the design they really liked.

For years now MANVIL has had questions as to whether we’d want to expand to a clothing line. We love product development, but due to a history of work in the construction trades, we have a heavy preference towards the durable, the over-sized, and the cotton or wool. (The waxed cotton in foul weather)

We’re not a huge fan of synthetic clothing. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but we’d never be able to look all modern and fashionable like in the Nike or adidas high fashion realm. Although we do have affiliates who’d sport that stuff with applomb, the hollow strands that make up poly-propy-whatever dont work for MANVIL’s core office.  Let’s just say that the strands retain our personal traits so well that we prefer cotton or wool due to their ability to become odor free. (Plug nose here)

So what does MANVIL do at this point when the fabric we love doesn’t come cheap? We keep on trying to figure out ways to make it work for us, and in the meantime, we introduce this, the MANVIL Apparel logo v.1.5.

Soapbox extravaganza!

MANVIL has enjoyed being a part of Portland Adult Soapbox for almost 9 years now. Nine years? Oof Dah!

Oh, it started out innocently. A lunatic red-head at the bar stated she needed somebody to push her car. No big deal, right? So we stepped right in to help. Well the day was a blast, the ginger raced like the loon she is, as did her partner, and although she didn’t win, the fun and camaraderie (there honey, it’s finally spelled right) stuck in our heads. About a thousand fun-loving souls, all relatively well medicated, having a giant party in a public park with the paid-for consent of the city of Portland. (Our fair city!)

So, many years later, when the Derby Grand Jefe, Captain Chaos asked MANVIL for some help with the graphics on a fairly tight deadline, we were more than happy to oblige. We fulfilled all design needs for the event with pride of ownership.

Then a potential client asked about any recent integrated marketing campaigns we’d finished lately. Big words! Fancy words, which to us meant, “what did you do to promote something”. So we roughed something up for them… and realized, hey, we were on task with this whole thing. There is ‘cohesion in the design elements’ (read; a common theme) and the damned things kinda look good. They looked great post-production thanks to the professional efforts of Tom at Northwest Imprints and Sher-Lynn at the IMI Group. (Tees and posters) Our rapidly produced advertisement was displayed in the Portland Mercury and the Soapbox website turned out to be well received as well.

So here is a pile of the images, in a rather hastily built display. (sometimes it’s better to get the images displayed hastily, than to never display them at all)