Happy Chinese New Year!

Year of the Rooster Client Gift | Tactile Marketing, Holiday Mailers, Curated Corporate Gifts | Barbour Design

As we begin celebrating the year of the ox, we thought we’d share a “hot” project from our archives. Rather than sending clients the usual “thanks for your business” holiday mailer, we opted to surprise them in January with a mailer celebrating the year ahead. The 2017 Chinese New Year which began on January 28 welcomed the Year of the…

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WE ♥ MG

A revolutionary illustrator, graphic designer, art director, visual philosopher and co-founder of New York magazine. A moment of silence please for Milton Glaser who died of natural causes on June 26, 2020, his 91st birthday. Four characters, scribbled in red crayon on a scrap of envelope: I ♥ N Y In 1977 in the backseat of a…

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Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Casamigos Tequila Gift Mailer Adidas ESPN | Tactile Marketing, Corporate Appreciation Gifts, Thank You Mailers, Package Design | Barbour Design

Grab a margarita, it’s Cinco de Mayo! Speaking of margaritas, here’s a fun project from our archives. Back in 2017, we produced a high-end gift mailer for ESPN to send to individuals on the adidas marketing team in appreciation of their ESPYs partnership. Each mailer included a bottle of Casamigos® Tequila Negro, one of the…

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Retro Recreations of Recognizable Logos

We can all agree that the 1980s had a very specific aesthetic that proliferated into all areas of our culture, from fashion to music to graphic design and everything in between. So when digital artist/musician/internet persona Future Punk recently took some, ahem, very recognizable brands and gave them an 80s-styled retro makeover, we swooned. Future…

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In A Parallel Universe

At a time when our collective consciousness is so acutely aware of gender roles, and (a long overdue) war has been waged against sexist practices and other gender issues, Lebanon-based photographer/visual artist Eli Rezkallah turns twisted gender roles depicted in vintage advertisements on their heads. Rezkallah painstakingly recreated some blatantly sexist ads, but with a…

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Musical Mashup Masterpieces

Musical mashups often produce unexpectedly interesting results. The fusion of contrasting artists and genres can make for some pretty special compositions. Los Angeles-based artist (and United States Air Force Staff Sergeant) Corban Lundborg, also known as COLD, recently explored this concept visually after being commissioned to create artwork inspired by vinyl (hence the 12″ square…

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The Provocative Pop Art of Ben Frost

Melbourne, Australia-based contemporary artist Ben Frost has a pop art aesthetic with a subversive, confrontational spirit. In some of his most recent work, Frost essentially uses mainly (junk) food and pharmaceutical packaging as a canvas for his bold illustrations inspired by pop culture, Roy Lichtenstein, and manga. His mashups are not random, though… Frost exhibits…

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Alex Schlegel’s Terrific Typography

Oh, experimental typography… how we love thee. Perhaps it’s a case of design envy, or we’re just taken with pretty things in general, but when done well, experimental typography can stand on its own, out of context. This is definitely the case with the work of Hamburg, Germany-based motion designer/illustrator Alex Schlegel. Schlegel’s visual explorations…

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Sneakered

In an effort to pay homage to some superb Italian design manifested widely through consumer goods, Italian-American designer Gianluca Gimini conceived this series of fictional co-branded sneakers. Looking at Gimini’s body of work, particularly this imaginative series, appropriately titled “Sneakered”, it’s clear that Gimini operates on a creative plane not easily defined. At a time…

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Ridiculously Clever Lego Riddles

Believe it or not, for being such a simple, uncomplicated product, Lego has some particularly clever and thought-provoking advertisements (here and here). Already three years old, this campaign celebrating 55 years of the Lego brand is basically a series of 55 visual riddles, fittingly featuring little more than the iconic bricks. The great minds at…

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