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Tag: toys

#127 Slip & Slide

July 31, 2018August 1, 2018 Chaz DeSimone 1 Comment

127 Slip & Slide 

#127 Slip & Slide
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This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Amperbr& series

Slip & Slide

Amper­Art #127, Slip & Slide, is the lat­est in the series of Amperbr& posters. This col­lec­tion is dear to my logo-​lovin’ heart, as I enjoy noth­ing more than design­ing cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty, specif­i­cal­ly the logo­mark & logo­type. The con­cept for each Amperbr& design is to fea­ture the brand name’s and, ‘n, or & set as an amper­sand in the pri­ma­ry style used for the logo’s text. The actu­al logo used as a mod­el for Slip & Slide looks like this:

 

Usu­al­ly I use the retro ver­sion of the pack­age or logo, but the orig­i­nal Slip & Slide box (below) did­n’t have a very pret­ty log0 — kin­da ugly, in fact — so I opt­ed for a lat­er, still retro-​ish, ver­sion, above.

The lat­est ver­sion looks like this: 

The col­ors of the new logo are cer­tain­ly appeal­ing, but I don’t think the type­style exudes the play­ful­ness of slid­ing & slip­ping on a run­way of water, and is quite dat­ed. Maybe Wham‑o wants to retain the decades-​old inno­cence of the won­der­ful, sim­ple toy; I’m all for that. How­ev­er, I feel the prod­uct name “Slip ‘n Slide” could be ren­dered with a more exhuber­ant  & con­tem­po­rary let­ter­ing style and still retain the iden­ti­ty factor. 

Check out the Slip ‘N Slide® Surf Rider® Double!

 

Good old-​fashioned summer toys, still fun today

Along with Slip & Slide, there were Fris­bees (also made by Wham‑o) and squirt guns (now mega water can­nons) as sum­mer­time toys in the 50s and 60s. For­tu­nate­ly all of these are still pop­u­lar, along with roller skates (no met­al key required) & boo­gie boards.

So dangerous this toy was banned — but we sure had fun

Some of these old toys could be dan­ger­ous, espe­cial­ly since us kids weren’t required to wear full-​on body armor like hel­mets and knee pads back then, but there was one in par­tic­u­lar that guar­an­teed blood: the beloved Flexy Rac­er, made by a sled man­u­fac­tur­er who added wheels. You rode this thing on your stom­ach, just a few inch­es from the ground. Your hands wrapped around the brake han­dles (which just rubbed against the skin­ny tires, and did­n’t ever stop the thing in time). The han­dles also were part of a steer­ing mech­a­nism, but all we ever did was tilt our body left or right to make a turn. The speeds got up there on the steep streets where I lived and this was more fun than a roller coast­er.  This short vid gives you an idea how dan­ger­ous and fun that Flexy was:

If you like old indus­tri­al films, this is the Flexy Fly­er com­pa­ny that made the Flexy Rac­er, c. 1955. Notice how many steps they used to assem­ble one sled — espe­cial­ly tight­en­ing each bolt indi­vid­u­al­ly at 3:00, which could be done in a few sec­onds by a robot today.

Have fun this sum­mer! And wear those hel­mets and knee pads, you wusses.

 


Production notes for #127 Slip & Slide:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Ampersand: Tempo
Credits:
Logos & SurfRider Double photo: Wham‑o
Vintage box: Soul 2 Spill
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

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AmperArt posters may be distributed freely both electronically and in print form, for they are intended to be enjoyed by everyone (especially ampersand fans). Please keep the entire poster intact, however, with all logos and text appearing in its original form under the main image. AmperArt is a trademark of Desimone Design. Images and text, on posters and within this site, copyright by Chaz DeSimone. All rights reserved.

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