As any self respecting cigar or pipe smoker knows, the best way to light up is by using a wooden match. As such, I’ve got a boxes of wooden matches stashed all over the house, garage, pockets and car. It is one of those items that you never really think about too hard though. There’s no real reason to think about them beyond “does it work as advertised?” — in this case, does it light? Or did it break?

Recently, though, I picked up a box at the supermarket and noticed they had changed vendors. No longer was…whatever brand they previously sold. Now they upgraded to offer Diamond matches. It’s not an item that I would even notice usually, but as a designer I was immediately struck by the packaging. I have some vague memory of the brand, but it seems as though they’ve gone through a redesign. And I love it. It’s clean with a touch of vintage and really stands out on a shelf.

Digging a little deeper, it seems like the brand has be tossed around by various holding companies and private equity firms which makes it seem a bit less glamorous than America’s leading producer of matches.

But those graphics! The design! The style! What’s a poor designer to do, but start drawing?

Here’s a couple of versions of the single and crossed match illustrations and because it’s one of my favorite techniques, there’s also animated versions. Dropping a <style> tag inside the SVG with @keyframe animations is a great way to sneak an animation past a content management system. Just be sure you nest the animation inside a prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference media query.

The animation itself is just a combination of scale, translate and rotate transformations. The one nice one is the ability to flip the flame by using a negative value on the X axis of a scale transformation.

transform: scaleX(-1);

I did consider doing a more elaborate animation, but…discretion is the better part of valor as they say. It quickly became clear that going down that path was leading further and further away from the inspiration point. Clean, crisp and iconic, thank you very much.

Tangentially, I do like the concept of a matched pair, burning together. Makes me think of my wife. ♥️

Need a light? You can download them here.

And the dark humor that sustains us.

Back in 2016, a video game came out that was somewhat prescient — Tom Clancy’s The Division. Maybe prescience is easy when the humanity is so predictably set on self-destruction, glorifies ignorance and revels in ineptitude. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, I know.

It’s a great game and my wife and I pre-ordered it mostly due to it being based in NYC. A triple A game with highly detailed, open world maps of Manhattan? And a Tom Clancy based story? Yes, please.

And it’s a great game! We had a ton of fun running around all the neighborhoods we know and love. My wife would join friends online and point out our apartment or my office. We note differences between fiction and reality as we worked through missions.

And that’s where this little guy comes in. I think it was in the Brooklyn section of the game and in an alley, it was a large graffiti on the wall. This was also when I was drawing the symbols from Destiny ultimately leading to the Symbology project. Naturally, I was immediately drawn to this cool illustration, a symbol of sorts, a smiling wink and a nod, a thumb in the eye of authority in the face of disaster.

Flash forward to 2020 and there’s an actual global pandemic. And there are refrigerator trucks on the streets of Manhattan trying to hold all the dead bodies. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, I know.

As it wasn’t part of the Symbology project, this illustration never had a home. Now it does. If you need a symbol for a bit of “screw you,” please take it. We need more signs. We need more humor. We need more ways to laugh at our despair.

You can download a version in JPG and SVG format here.

This post is a little diversion into a bit of recent inspiration (and fandom) that my wife brought to my attention — the amazing world of Stingray!

Now for those of you like me, who have never heard of Stingray, it’s a British science fiction children’s TV show from the 1960’s. Not only was it her favorite TV show as a child, which was reason enough to start my investigation, but the fact that I had never even heard of it was confounding and as I started looking, a whole new world opened up. The world of Supermarionation.

This series has tweaked all my kid/adult hot buttons — aliens, typography, a retro vibe, pseudo-futuristic gadgets like “hydrophones”, a pulse pounding soundtrack and some truly creative production tricks. Let’s take a look at a few of these and you’ll see why I’m obsessed.

In terms of design, the logo screams vintage 1960s cool. So much so, that I whipped up a quick redraw of it (above) just for fun. It’s cartoony, fun and has that swing so prevalent during that decade. Even before watching the show, I saw this logo and was immediately hooked.

Musically, it’s all about excitement. Drums in the lead, with big horns, the soundtrack (and corresponding in-episode tracks) are a character unto themselves, often times taking the place of dialog to communicate the story. It’s the kind of theme song that serves as a siren for seven year olds (like me). You hear it and you come running because “anything can happen in the next half hour”.

Digging behind the scenes, I found the production of the show is super creative and quirky. They film the puppets in between an aquarium and painted backgrounds to give the underwater shots more realism. The puppets and models stay dry, but little fish still swim around. Same with things like special effects like explosions. There’s a bunch of little things you’ll notice, like adding sweat to the puppets faces for dramatic effect and when they need a closeup of hands — they’ll switch to a shot of actual human hands.

Luckily, you can now watch the series on Amazon Prime and I’m working my way through all 40 episodes.

But wait! There’s more!

I went ahead and created a couple of iOS ringtones for those of you (like me) who appreciate a little excitement in your iPhone.

And I’m not the only Stingray fan out here. If you want to add more cool to your font library, you can download the Anderson Stingray font.

“Stand by for action!”

Union Square, NYC

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Another geisha in Brooklyn. I believe it’s the same artist who created these two pieces.

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Red Hook, Brooklyn, NYC

Note: I do not know the name of this painting (if it has one). The title of this post is taken from a song that the painting reminded me of.