Twilight Bark!

Bryce, a fellow Designerland follower contacted me over the weekend in regards to his KickStarter concept that he needs help with. Sound out the twilight bark!


He's currently writing an epub for Fathers & Sons who enjoy Disney parks, the book contains fun facts intermingled with games families can play while in line for an attraction or just walking through the parks. Who says you need interactive touch screens and digital queue playgrounds to keep kids entertained???

Check it out and help support a dream:  http://kck.st/18fEw87 

A small summer side project...

Summer's basically here and I've been overly swamp with work...both my day time work and my freelance work not to mention I'm still renovating a house!!!! I promise I'll get back to Designerland as soon as I can.  In the meantime I'll let your imagination wonder for a few.....

Tune in later this fall for more on this jaunty project! See you all soon!!!!

Different Disney Strokes

Hope everyone had a swell weekend. Things have been crazy around here so alas no new font case studies...soon I hope.

Over the past weekend I did have some time to do a little jaunty treasure hunting at some antique stores around the area. If you follow me on twitter then you saw my finds!  For some reason I always find things in sets of threes. It's kind of become a game. Once we find one thing we know somewhere, somehow two more should follow....they usually do.

When I'm out and about looking for various vintage theme park merchandise I tend to always come across tons of non theme park Disney antiques. The one thing I find so interesting are the various different Walt Disney logos/signatures used on the packaging.

Most all of them have the look and feel of the free flowing, bubbly Walt script but some are vary unique in their brush stokes, weight and height.

I've started collecting photos of these various Walt scripts while out and about. Are any of them real? Are they all fake? Who knows, either way I love the feel and look of them.

One logo script I came across a few months back I recreated and changed into a new vintage (double entendre) logo for Walt Disney Imagineering.

Can anyone guess what type of product this original logo was used for?

Update!

For those of you who supported me and my blog by snatching up the new addition of the tiki pineapple whip tee...I wanted to give you an update!

Shirts have been printed and I'm in the process of packing them! Hold tight...tropical goodness to ensue!

Poster Design

New poster concept  I worked up....what do you think?

The Enchanted Tiki Tee

Welcome back to yet another Retro Tee concept. I hope everyone has had a swell weekend. Last week I had such an amazing amount of fan feedback on the Enchanted Tiki Room tee concept that I decided to roll out another concept I've had collecting dust in the wings.

Unlike my typography case studies, I have enough shirt concepts to get me through another two years if I just posted only concepts for apparel but I'm not a one trick pony and typography is my passion. I had some free time this weekend to actually begin tracking down original typefaces and display font used throughout The Land pavilion.  Hopefully, I will be able to find more vintage research...most likely I'll have to break down and use some of todays fonts and typefaces.

Back to this weeks concept, the design is based on one of the Disneyland marketing photos of Walt actually inside the show building. I decided I really wanted to push my experimentation with frequency and dot angle when it came to halftones, not to mention it has a nice throw back look. I scaled the color of the photo back to a darker shade of the tee shirt color. On top of the photo I overlaid a graphic from a 1963 marketing piece that came from a simple 4 color brochure. 

I went back and forth on color combinations of this design. In the end I decided to keep the color palette 85% true to that simple 4 color brochure, while the colors don't necessarily harken the themes of Adventureland, they do hold true to my original inspiration. 

I could see the shirt paired with a nice pair of deep khaki cargo shorts and sported on a warm summer day. Well that does it for this weeks post. I hope all of you have a good week and see you back here real soon!

Enchanted Tiki Room

Welcome back to a new Designerland post. I'd like to first of all thank all of your who ordered the new edition of the Tiki Pineapple Whip shirt! I will be placing the order this week and they should be on the print production schedule for next week, be sure to tune in for my updates. Now onto this weeks post...


As I've mentioned before I just acquired a home and have been spending all my free time with this retro renovation therefore the Designerland Typography Case Studies have taken a back seat. Hopefully, I'll get around to our next one in the upcoming weeks as I have some downtime from the home. 

Now onto this weeks post. . .a new Retro '55 shirt. While the content may not be from the year 1955, the ideals and dreams surrounding it come from the yesteryears of classic Disneyland which we all love and enjoy.

This weeks concept is based on the World Engagement print advertisement put out in June of 1963 in promotion of the Enchanted Tiki Room. 

Well that will do it for this weeks post. Tune in soon for more fun Designerland updates. Thanks as always for stopping by and have a swell week!