RPS New Era's

Really excited about our new RPS New Era caps. They'll be available in the shop on Friday, December 26 and then online the following Monday. They feature a varsity style RPS logo on the front, and "RPSLIFE" script on the back. Only 36 of each color were produced!

It Was All A Dream

A lot of things have happened since my last post. First after a two week long sale, we successfully moved RPS out of the old space and into our new one. The shop was closed for a week, but we managed to get it open and now things are finally feeling like we're getting into a normal flow.



The entire process, from initial architectural drawings to our opening was about three long months. The buildout timeline was insane, but somehow things managed to fall into place in the end. I can't believe how stressed and anxious I got during this period, but I think it will be all worth it in the long run. There's still a few things that we need to do to make the space really feel complete, but I'm happy with the way things turned out and am looking forward to the next few years of creating our own brand and retail space for ourselves, and not some big company that I have no relationship or desire to help other than to pay my bills.



Even more importantly, Tara and I had the honor of being in the wedding party for my sister and Trevor's wedding this past weekend. I don't think I've ever been so happy for my sister and family as I was that day. The wedding was perfect.




Hopefully I'll start posting with more frequency now that a little bit of normalcy has crept back into my life.

Getting Ready to Move...

So we're having a big ass sale starting this weekend.

Round 1

We met with Ian of Domestic Architecture today to go over plans for the new space. Things are looking good so far...

Cards

Printed by Evolution Press, whose new identity and collateral were designed by Tara, Kevin and Kelly at Graphiti Associates, who are also redesigning their own collateral. Designing collateral is fun.

Laser Band Aids

Amazing details.

Added Officialness

Got a few press sheets of the business cards we designed for our store and they turned out really nice! It probably sounds ridiculous since we've been running the store for almost six months now (time flies), but having business cards somehow makes things seem more official.

On the front side we foiled the logo black on 100# black stock. On the information side we chose to print with pearl foil. There was some concern about whether the pearl would have enough contrast on black stock because it's a little translucent and the type is so thin, but I think it turned out great. It gave us the subtle quality we were looking for, without being overly metallic or shiny looking.

Unveiling

Bruce and I put up a new sign at the shop...

Less To Worry About

In my spare time this past week I've been working on business cards for the shop. It's been a nice change of pace working on a project that allows me to focus my time and energy on only a few elements—shape, layout, color—trying to make them as perfect as I can (still working on it).

That's not to say that those aren't my primary considerations on interactive projects, but there are a far greater number of other elements to deal with—user flow and experience, information architecture, hardware specs, dev platforms, interface (keyboard/mouse or other), OS/browser compatibilities—that take away focus from the first three graphic elements.

The small sandbox has been refreshing and I'm really looking forward to the satisfaction of having a physical object at the end of project instead of a website or installation that will disappear or become obsolete in the next 6 months.

Busy Weekend

Last Friday we had our annual holiday party. They created a casino setting for everyone to gamble for playchips, which at the end of the night you used to purchase raffle tickets for prizes. Free booze and "high rolling" make for a very fun time.






Saturday night we celebrated Adrien's birthday. We had dinner at Oceanaire, which quite honestly wasn't that great. But we finished strong at Typhoon for drinks and to party!




Congratulations to Chris and Marissa on their engagement! It's about time!!!



On Sunday Austin and Jennifer from Dime came through the shop to shoot some shots for the magazine. Look out for the issue in February; Bruce and I might be in it!



p.s. I think I need a flash for my camera.

Capitol Blog

We launched a new blog for the site, where we gave a little background info on The Takeover of the store. We also sent out our first mailing using Campaign Monitor and it went off as smooth as could be. So far it's been a great tool for managing subscriptions and creating campaigns.