POP INK
Visual Pop Culture
Pop Ink is a home goods brand featuring the work of CSA Design, and produced in collaboration with French Paper Company. Pop Ink features saccharine sweet, slightly disturbing, yet strangely compelling art and artifacts for the (post) modern world.
Pop Ink was a large, fun, and amusing project that encompassed all methods of design. Not only did it include product design, but in many cases the design ended up being the physical product.
I was part of a small team that was responsible for creating unique designs and illustrations for the brand. These designs were featured on an assortment of retail products including plates, gift wrap, note cards, journals, napkins, wall art, soap packaging, memo books, and paper kits.
When using so many illustration styles and different images, color plays a key role in creating a cohesive brand aesthetic. For Pop Ink, I was responsible for layout (specifically for their books), product design, and illustration. I used particularly bright colors to create a cheery look and feel for the products. This also added a nice contrast to the art and aided in brand cohesion.
CSA Design also developed a custom-molded soap bar for Pop Ink. As is the case with other products, the packaging needed to stand out in a crowd. We developed French Paper slip-covers, which were adhered to the soap with silver typographic labels. The motifs could stand alone on one bar of soap, or as a larger design when as four bars were grouped together.
Designed for sale in museum and gift shops, I also created several designs for pocket-sized Pop Ink notebooks.
Pop Ink Culinary Art plates were produced and packaged as collectibles with four melamine plates per set.
The ready-to-hang Decor-A-Boards were invented as a clever, attractive way to put CSA Images on a wall without the need for a frame. The images are printed in full-color directly on birch veneer. They have a sculpted self-framing edge, which I designed and engineered.
The Pop Ink book series put the CSA Images collection to work in a whole new way. Candy for the eye and bubblegum for the brain, each book features text written by Michael J. Nelson (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame), and provides a glimpse of the strange and varied imagery of CSA Images along with the quirky humor that defines Pop Ink.
Pop Ink books were distributed worldwide by Time Warner/Hachette Books. Happy Kitty Bunny Pony was an instant hit that reached number 2 on Amazon.com in the humor category.
Pop Ink books also included paired products that featured art work on journals, note cards, and memo books.
