He has this hand sign he’s always throwing up which stands for the fact that he’s from the Westside of Flint, MI (FLINT TOWN!).  So he asked me to make up a logo for the sign to put on his blog. After I worked in out in illustrator, we loved it so much we ended up basically working on a mini business plan for an entire brand, Westside $ociety. The brand now in it’s beginning stages but, it’s going to serve as catalyst for all those who want to make a name for themselves. We’re all products of our society, so who better to represent that society or even redefine that society than you?

The t-shirts are coming soon, but right now he’s giving away free hand logo stickers, so if you want one before they’re all gone, you need to hit the site up or shoot him an email, jimmiewestside11@gmail.com.

Working with Jim West has definitely motivated me to be more proactive and enthusiastic in a lot of things related to my own brand. When I’m helping him, giving advice, working on deadlines and other plans I realize how much I’ve overlooked, put on the back burner, or neglected when it comes to my own business. He’s made me totally re-evaluate Tecknicolor and it’s a great thing. I’ve got a renewed drive and energy for the brand and it’s all thanks to Jimmie Westside.

The other things that caught my attention was that he’s seems to have coined this a term describing a great majority of the the Gen Y demographic, verge culture.

In his own words :

These kids are so often misunderstood because of the way they dress or look. People say they’re lazy, disrespectful, or disinterested. But the opposite is true. The whole idea of verge culture is the convergence of many different cultures. These kids mix Indian bhangra music with hip-hop; they like Japanese anime, blaxploitation, and Steve McQueen. They are interested in art and social causes. They’re a minority, but there are a lot of them. And they’re global.

I hadn’t ever heard of verge culture before so I looked up the term and it basically described all of us who grew up with the internet, cell phone, social networking and with the world one click away. I’m kinda diggin’ the term becuase it gives a new way to look at, decipher and describe today’s youth, especially from a business standpoint. Since I’m a part of that market and I cater to the market I like the fact that it gives me a more in depth description of….me/you.

The article follows him through his typical work day and he explains the each step and process. He says he has an open door policy so people come in and chat with him all day with out a formal appointment. He seems like a cool guy. You can check the full article out here.

I got an email a while back from a great customer and fan of the brand who’s even offered to help me out in some areas who. He brought up the fact that he’s cool with the owner of Bobby Fresh, Robert Preston and wondered if there was a way he and I could work together. He was like well I know he’s your competition but I know he would love your work, or something along the lines of that.

There’s a guy I met in Finishline a few years back, Terrence. I was doing the Cool Grey Jordan tees and I wanted to see how the greys matched up to my design. He went and brought out the, not yet released, shoes for me to take a look at. He also asked a few questions about they brand and said he might pic a tee up from the site. He’s a super cool dude and even though he doesn’t live in MI anymore we’ve still been keeping in touch via social networking sites. He’s now started his own brand Aviation Bay and ever so often I’ll give my two cents on designs and business tactics. He saw a packaging post on Instagram and asked if he could use the idea for when he ships he’s tees out.

Pepsi's Collaboration Promotion with Doritos

I don’t have any issue with “competition”. Maybe for bigger more established brands with stock options and 401k plans it’s cool to hate another brand or have a strict “stay away from them” kind  of attitude, but that’s just not how I get down. When I see another brand doing something awesome, it fuels me to do the absolute best I possibly can, I want people the raise the bar and I love working at reaching and even raising it myself.

I love what Bobby Fresh is doing, he’s helped me to realize what a huge market is out there for us sneaker lovers. Let’s be totally honest, I’m probably not very much competition for him anyway. He’s way more established and probably funded than I am right now. If Bobby Fresh called me up tomorrow asking me to work on some designs or collaborate or whatever, I’m down! Maybe from a traditional business standpoint that’s a bad way to see things, but in sneaker culture the whole “I’ll get mine, you get yours…. buy for $160, resell for $1000″  attitude is helping to make the culture we’ve grown to love one you darn near hate. I can’t get with it.

When Terrence asked if he could use the same packaging technique I did, I said of course. I don’t think we should blatantly steal a brands designs or concepts and act like they’re our own, but that’s not what he did….He straight asked for my permission to use a packaging technique, which isn’t all that unique in the first place. I want his brand to succeed just as much as I want mine to; if we can both exchange ideas to help one another get there then lets do it. The term “self made” is an oxymoron, no one is self made. No one has ever gotten anywhere alone and no one wants to be alone at the top.

Photo Credit: Heavier

We all know that the love for sneakers fuels a lot of revenue and in my opinion there’s enough to go around. If you’ll buy one limited edition tee you’ll buy three, becuase when do you have too many shirts to rock with your newly purchased shoes? You don’t! If we thought that way we wouldn’t be buying multiple pairs of shoes in the first place. I’d even promote another sneaker related brand on my site, I’m that confident in the fact that it’s perfectly ok to work together to make each other better.

Making my dreams a reality is intertwined in helping other peoples dreams become a reality. It’s not a gimmick, I’m dead serious. I LOVE MY COMPETITION!

One thing you may notice about the KREAM Anonymous tees, is that inside label is different. I used to iron on labels and it only featured just one size. Since I’m small brand running on a tight budget, the iron on option, although not the most convenient, was more cost efficient. After taking notes from a few other brands I keep up with I realized I could go with the bespoke-ish option of having all sizes printed on and circling the correct size by hand. It still gives a personal touch but saves much more time.

Old Label

I’ll be posting up pics of the special packaging that these shirts will come shipped in soon. Based on the fact that I always ship with some form of food or candy, I’m sure you can guess how these will be shipped.

 Here’s an up close photo of the cookie chain.

2012 is the Year of the 12′s!!!!!!

Alright so to point….I can’t even count how many designs I’ve done for these shoes over the past 3 months, that I have been less the satisfied with. That may have been another reason it’s taken so long to put this design out. I want to show them all to you now, however, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be using them in the future for something, so I’m gonna wait on that.  The design isn’t difficult to understand (I know my designs can get deep lol). It’s a monster type character who one could argue resembles the likeness of a Sesame Street character that loves cookies to an unhealthy extent.

This monster is addicted to K.R.E.A.M. (If you don’t know what that means, leave this blog immediately). He has been a recovering K.R.E.A.M. addict since the 90′s (I have no idea how old he is) and becuase he’s been able to over come his addiction he’s inviting you to come to his 12 step program, KREAM Anonymous. He’s a cool dude but don’t ask him for MILK he’ll flip out you. They do not serve MILK but I’m gonna let you know who does soon.

When I was thinking of what to do for the 12′s my mind continuously came back to the concept of a dozen. Even though I played with the idea of donuts and cupcakes, those things have been done so much. If it’s at all possible, I try to stay away from things I see everyone else doing, unless I can make it my own. So, I went with cookies. It didn’t take long to figure out what type of cookie I wanted to go with, becuase Oreo-ish type of cookies immediately make me think of KREAM so that was just a natural association. After trying to stick within the lines of a dozen cookies I finally (at the last possible minute) came up with a way to include the cookies and the number 12 in a more creative fashion. Those ideas always wake up out my sleep and I work on them till 6am (not advised).

I actually haven’t ever owned the Playoff’s before, just the Taxi’s. However I plan on purchasing all three colorways: Playoff’s, Taxi’s and Obsidian (these will be my fav.). I’m looking forward to all three pair and I hope you all who get them will wear them with the KREAM Anonymous Tee.

The shirt is going to be up for presale in the store starting NOW. It will ship out the week after the Playoff’s are released, April 21st. So, shipping begins the 23rd. Thank you for reading this lovely insight into my design process. Until next time……

]]> http://tecknicolor.com/2012/04/playoff-12s-tee-kream-anonymous/feed/ 0 http://tecknicolor.com/2012/04/happy-sneaker-i-mean-easter/ http://tecknicolor.com/2012/04/happy-sneaker-i-mean-easter/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:17:54 +0000 Tecknicolor http://tecknicolor.com/?p=1264 Continue reading →]]>

It’s so interesting to see what sneakers evolve into purchase worthy must-have’s. This years Easter pack, like most of the Basketball packs of 2012, consist of the the KD 4′s, Lebron 9′s, and Kobe 7′s. I’m personally not huge fan of these basketball shoes individually, but I admit that teal and turquoise is quite lovely. I also would be lying if I said I’d never own a pair of either of the these styles. These released today at Midnight.

There are also the Easter Dunk High AC’s for the ladies

Now for a flash back of the past hyped Easter sneakers ……

……and no Easter sneaker post would be complete with out my own Sweettart AF1 Customs

…..Oh the glory days of customizing.

I really liked the lo’s better than the hi’s. Those were the ones I owned in white, black and red. For some reason I got it in my head that I should wear them with my Jordan 45 jersey. I rocked that look hard. Later someone asked why I was wearing Grant Hill’s with a Jordan jersey and then it occurred to me that, aside from color, they didn’t really go together. But, whatever man….. I was killing it with my little kid style. They were just mad becuase they didn’t have either. Boom!

If these shoes ever retro I’m definitely going to get a pair. I’m determined to acquire all of my favorite childhood sneakers and the Grant Hill 1′s are high on the sneaker priority list.

….and yes the Phoenix beating Dallas (respect to Jason Kidd) tonight inspired this post. GRANT HILL DRINKS SPRITE!

I wasn’t really into Jordan’s in the early stages of my sneaker collecting, so I haven’t ever owned a pair of 4′s before. I’m pretty excited about getting my first pair. This excitement is slightly tainted by the fact the the GS sizes don’t have the actual plastic lace loop triangle thingy. Ours is made of leather or whatever Nike’s calling it these days. I don’t see why they couldn’t just make smaller plastic pieces for kids shoes.  Despite this terrible change in design, I’ll be purchasing them.

Interesting fact: The the pattern we call cement print was actually nicknamed “cookies and cream” because, it looked just like cookies and cream. That seems like something I would have capitalized on in my design. Oh well…. Don’t miss out on your “Power of Four” shirts to make your 4′s.

I have never actually owned a pair of Jordan Four’s before. February 18th will own my first, but definitely not my last, pair. I’m pretty excited about this release, but then I could say that about most of the sneakers I buy. As you can see in the design above, like most, I’m particularly fascinated with the cement print. I usually give a break down of how I came up with the shirt design and the whole design process, from sketch to shirt. However, I don’t always sketch out ideas before I take them to the computer and this was one of those times. So although there are a few variations of this design (I’ll post up the rejects later), there are no sketches to show. Some designs take a long while to think of and some immediately come to mind. The Power of Four tee is one of immediate ideas. The handle of the hammer says “Whoever wears this shirt, if he be worth, shall possess the power of…. ” and the you can see the word “FOUR” made up of cement with the hammer and shoe coming out of it.

I’m well aware of the over saturation of the sneaker related brands and street wear in general. I try my best to come up with designs that aren’t “typical” in an attempt to stand  out from the bunch. That’s not the easiest task when most of our favorite sneakers have a specific popular selling point or theme, like MARS or cement. These selling points are the familiar and identifiable attributes we buy the these shoes for. However, I believe there’s a way to be in line with the shoes best features while staying original. So I hope you enjoy my spin on the Four’s concept.

Since I decided to go my own route and do a Thor themed design, I figured it would be appropriate to sell movie posters as well. I didn’t know how this would go over, so only had one poster printed up and the rest are up for presale. I’m probably going to have a giveaway for the one I have on hand so stay tuned.