Posted by
Mongo
Another Retro Rag original. This is probably the second design I ever did for the store. I cannot take full credit for coming up with the idea. Besides being an homage to JAWS I had seen an advert for another shirt in a magazine. It kind of really sparked my interest as a pop culturist. The Dobler Effect was a referential idea to the movie Say Anything but this was creating something that was sort of an in joke to the nature of the film. I find humor in it. It would be kind of like seeing a job posting for a Death Star lever puller. Great benefits, free parking, 401k, upward mobility, vacation, Imperial Academy tuition reimbursement.
So, I put down the magazine and jumped in the chair with my lap top in hand. I thought to myself, what would be funny about JAWS that wouldn’t call out the subject matter by name, but give you enough clues to figure it out? How about a business or club? Then the in jokes started flooding me. Let’s promote getting in the water. Membership to the Amity Island Swim Club requires one thing, making it back to shore.
The design is a simple image of a swimmer in the water with the text forming a circle, or perhaps teeth… A lot of people will find fault with the design because it has the wrong year on it. Just remember, which came first, movie or book? JAWS was published in 1974, hence the year. So, there’s some trivia for you.
Like Dobler Effect, the original design was clean and new. I was still green when it came to design and hadn’t figured out how to age and stress the images to make them look vintage and old, like if they came from the 70s. I was merely trying to get my stuff out there for consumption and was a little haphazard with it. As I became more comfortable with the process and could easily replicate the effect, I started looking back at my designs and started to redo them. Colors range from white to ash grey with the original blue logo, and a host of darker colors with a white logo imprinted on them. Shirts start as low as $12.99 and buttons and magnets start as low as $4.49 plus shipping.
Amity Island Swim Club
Olive Shirt with the white logo
Friday, September 18, 2009
Posted by
Mongo
Let’s kick this off with a classic. This is one of the first designs I did based on a favorite film of mine, Say Anything. For the uninitiated, stop reading this… actually, first go buy a shirt, then stop reading this and go watch it. If you are a fan of Jerry Maguire or Almost Famous and love 80s movies from John Hughes, you’ll love this one. It’s very smart and endearing. It also, unfortunately, gets attributed to John Hughes. As much as I love John Hughes, this is a totally different style of movie. It was actually Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut. You might have also heard of a little movie he wrote called Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Place in Pop Culture History
One of the iconic images from this film is Lloyd Dobler standing outside Diane Court’s house, hoisting a boom box over his head and blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Diane recently dumped Lloyd and this was one of his efforts to get her back. It happened to be the song that was playing on the radio the first time they made love, in the back seat of her car. Besides sending roses to someone, this is probably one of the most duplicated scenes attempted by people to reconcile with significant others, post breakup.
Mongo’s Design
I think there is a band called The Lloyd Dobler Effect, but I was looking at this from a weather analogy like Doppler Effect. I was going to with a weather styled design but felt that I lost some of the inherent homage to the original. So, I scrapped that and went with the basic silhouette rendition of a guy holding a boom box over his head with the text “The Dobler Effect” written underneath.
My original design has been tweaked to take the roughness off the outline and change the font. In the early days of my basic shop, “Retro Rags,” I didn’t understand resolution and size. When my image got blown up to 10 inches it blurred around the edges and I just used the Sharpen effect, which just made it jagged. I didn’t have a lot of designing experience under my belt and it felt sloppy. Once I opened up the new premium shop, I went back and redid the design with some better understanding of how to design in 200 ppi. It seems like such a rudimentary design, but it actually took a lot of work. I also felt that the font was not as effective so I changed to a more script like feel. It’s a small seller but a work of pop culture pride.
True Story
I was dating this girl my senior year of high school and for the first year and a half of college. We hit a rough patch after our first year and she found herself questioning her feelings for me. I was young…and a bit of a dick…but anyway, she wanted to take a small break and be alone for awhile. So, what did I do? I grabbed my boom box, trench coat, and cassette copy of the Say Anything soundtrack and stood outside her house. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a small radio like Lloyd Dobler did. I had one of those big honking dual cassette, detachable speaker, CD player jobs. After the first chorus my arms were ready to fall off.
For any of us who have been there and done that with Peter Gabriel playing o’er our heads, I give you…
The Dobler Effect
Shirts come in various colors and styles starting as low as $12.99
Magnets, Mugs, Buttons and Hats are also available. Buttons start out at $3.49.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
