Vans-a-go-go

Remember Scooby-Doo? How could you not, right? Close your eyes for a minute and picture the Mystery Machine…the glorious van which transported the ghost-hunting team on its shenanigans. Remember the flower power wheels? The free-flowing type? The shag-a-delic color scheme? (in the event you weren’t allowed to watch cartoons as a child, click here)

Well, it seems alot of people in the design world are remembering these same visuals. Over here at Clark Creative we’ve noticed 70’s & retro-inspired pieces popping up all over the web, direct mail and typfaces.

We recently purchased a House Industries font for a campaign, and the promotional pieces which arrived with the font are groovy examples of this retro epidemic. House is promoting its Street Van font kit, about which they say:

Whether you’re taking a weekend trip to the beach or just out “trollin’ for tuna,” the Street Van’s six “hopped-up” typefaces have the power to leave your competition laggin’ and the looks to leave ‘em gaspin.’

We also stumbled upon the Nike Vintage site, whose opening animation is….that’s right…a van! The site is a gold mine for 70s throwback goodness. You can download wallpapers, iron-on t-shirt art with slogans such as “Hell on Waffles” and Macho Makers, which are actually printable moustaches. Who can resist the Handlebar?

Steam Whistle Brewery out of Ontario utilizes a vintage fleet of vehicles to promote & transport their product. “The Steam Machine,” in particular, was inspired by the aforementioned Mystery Machine.

We’re not quite sure what sparked this van craze. Maybe its an age thing…with many of today’s designers having grown up in that era, they could be pulling from childhood memories. It could also stem from the media, with movies such as Semi Pro in theaters. Whatever put the van pedal to the metal…we can dig it.

1 comment April 28th, 2008

Why Blog? Because it’s awesome.

Everyone blogs for different reasons, but in the end it all comes down to one philosophy: Sharing.

On the Clark Creative blog we will share our ideas, our process, our passions, our personalities…all so you can get to know us a little better and see first-hand how awesome we are. No, we’re not full of ourselves, we have actually been dubbed “awesome” by the kind people over at MyEmma…we have a medal, so its official:

We’ll share tidbits like how Cari drew inspiration from a charity trip to Guatamala or how Melody cared so much about making a client happy, she created a custom plaid for his packaging!

In the world of creativity, anything is possible and everything matters. This philosophy is what we plan on sharing with you.

Enjoy our blog!

2 comments March 12th, 2008