Brooklyn Renegade Highlights 2010

The Renegade Marching Band!

We arrived for the National Stationery Show 3 weeks ago and ever since it's been a whirlwind rife with bloggable happenings. I'm still a week away from things truly cooling down and getting to sit down and write it all out-- but I have a few hours to kill between client meetings here in the W. Village so I'm gonna go ahead and do a quick and dirty look at my faves from the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn that we attended last weekend.

Miniature Rhino, purveyor of stationery and embroidery, offered a Letter Writing Service where you can type up a cute little note, which she would put in a nifty corked bottle before she'd send it via post to your intended recipient. It was one of the highlights of my Renegade experience, (though the audience of fair-goers crowding over my shoulder to read as I typed made me a bit self-conscious.)

Renegade is a fantastic venue to find silkscreened posters. Sel & Vinaigre from Montreal was my kind of freaky retro.

Illustrative wonders silkscreened by Clinton Reno of Columbus, OH.

A smattering of shirts from Print Liberation...

including this one sported by Lydia See. Now she can apologize for her tardy ass with panache.

Imaginative and peculiar illustrated posters from Raw Toast.

Got a booth visit from Jeremy, a senior printer at Studio on Fire, who was wandering the fair wearing this sweet t-shirt.

Up next, NSS highlights!

The Avatar!

Bad Avatar!

Avatar (2010): Dumb Movie about newagey blue critters in a hallucinogenic jungle exploited for their outofstockium or hardtofindium or whatever it was called.

Good Avatar!

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2006): Super cool Nickelodeon action/adventure cartoon series/trilogy that flips Japanese/Chinese culture/mythology on it's proverbial head/ass. Beautifully rendered by an indie Korean animation studio, visually stunning action sequences choreographed by a sifu master (using five distinct styles of martial arts), funny, gripping, complicated, spiritual, compelling, heart-wrenching, well written. Intended to captivate kids, obsessed over by adults. The series was an intricately put together 61 22-minute episodes, and ties up so gorgeously that a box of kleenexes for a) tears and b) jizz is strongly recommended.

One of my favorite action sequences from season 3.

The Avatar cartoon series was finished before Jim Cameron's Avatar was being filmed. However, by the time Nickelodeon was ready to do an Avatar movie for real, Cameron's film was in production, and with a court-order the Nickelodeon was forced to call the film anything but The Avatar.

M. Night Shyalamalamadingdong was a fan of the Avatar cartoon and got dibs on writing and directing the film. You might remember him from his first good film, the Sixth Sense, followed by a string of poorly written WTFs. From the trailers, I can tell that much of the story has been lost and doctored for Hollywood. And even with the expected trilogy that this franchise will dish out, there is no way in hell that anyone could take a movie and recreate the magic, humor and complexity of the original series that took more than 22 hours to play out.

But am I gonna see the movie? Hell yes. All 3 films. The Airbender movie will likely be a blockbuster and take folks by surprise... I've never seen a story that's been told quite like this one, and its a fun world to dwell in and ponder. Just know that there is something way better that precedes what yr about to be spoon-fed Shyamalamadingdong style.

All three Last Airbender trailers:

Thar be real arrggghh in thar blood.

My Viking buddies Erik and Dane are seriously fucked up.

It's going to be a great day.

After years of suck, SNL is back on top, the Digital Shorts in particular never fail to please.

You want it? You got it.

After a customer saw our Alice series at the Stationery Show, she asked if we had a Very Merry Unbirthday card. Nope. But 10 minutes after she left the booth, a new design was borned.

Machete!

When Rodriguez made his contribution to the fake trailers featured in Grindhouse, it was immediately rumored that he would eventually make the movie for real real. This movie is gonna explode my face off.

just wondering where i could purchase your cards in new york city? thanks!

Village Invites, Greenwich Letterpress, Cursive, Arthur's, Bowne & Co, Powerhouse Arena, Papel, Oblong Books, Word Books, Skaredy Kat, McNally Jackson Books, Rebel Katz, Shoefly, House of Cards and Curiosities, Green Cottage, Paper Trail, or you can just visit us in June at Renegade Brooklyn.

Ask about letterpress, wholesale, trade shows, & Blue Barnhouse.

How many catalogs do you need have printed up for the NSS? I heard someone suggest 1000, which sounds like a lot!

We don't print catalogs-- our line is so huge and new stuff is added so often that we opt not doing a catalog. Our entire line is in our webstore, and we just hand out business cards with our info along with a sample. Catalogs at the moment seem a waste of money and paper and postage if we're going to the shows-- though at some point we may stop doing shows and only do catalogs--because they ARE useful, but all depends on where you want to spend your money.

Sorry for the late reply- the notification on this thing doesn't seem to be working right.

Good luck at the show!

Ask about letterpress, wholesale, trade shows, & Blue Barnhouse.

Here comes the reaper.

This latest design is from Asheville artist and long time BBH collaborator, Lisa Nance. It will debut at the National Stationery show in NYC next week.

New website a comin'?!

Our current website is horribly out of date, completely off in terms of aesthetic and focus, and somehow the code is de-volving. I'm trying to have something new up in time for the release of my book, and I've designed an incredibly simple two page website I based off of an old printers catalog I inherited with my first press.

Here is the working mockup at the moment, click on it for a closer look.