Editing The Pen Addict 622/transcript (section)

== Pen Addict Shop Projects ==

* So, my shop, you know, I've had some things come through. You know, I did the Opus 88. That was before the Bennu. That was a really good one. And the Caran D'Ache 849. And, you know, I keep the Pen Addict shop mostly for collaboration stuff, right? I don't keep, like, a running stock of stuff. Like, I do a project and the project goes up. You know, there's some long-term items like Robert Oster Fire on Fire Inc. Or the Musgrave No. 1 pencils. Like, I just keep those in stock. Those are great products. But the big collaborations that take a lot of time and effort and money to come up with, like, I skipped pretty much all of 2023. And so, I got into 2024 and tried to kind of make a list, right? I made a list in my notebook, as one does. I was like, these are all the ideas I have. I just brain-dumped all the ideas. And one specific idea, well, two of these ideas, I had been holding onto for a long, long time. Like, literal years. And those are both live in the shop. And the first one is the Retro 51 Pen. And the second one is the Ebbets Field Flannel Hat.
* Those are fun projects to put on.
* So, I want to talk about them a little bit. Because I've gotten some questions, some feedback, some interest in, especially the pen, right, collaboration. Because if it's one of those things I've had in my pocket, I want to say three to four years. Like, I have this idea, right? I'm a sneakerhead, right? And a lot of people know this if you follow me on Instagram. I post a little bit of sneaker content out there. But, like, I like sneakers. I like design. I like uniqueness and all kinds of things like that. And I had this idea. Well, there's this sneaker designer named Virgil Abloh, who has passed away a couple years ago. Young guy. I think he was late 30s, early 40s. Passed to cancer. But he's a superstar, right? If you're into fashion or design or streetwear, like you say Virgil Abloh. And that's, like, you know, top of the heap, right? Like, he's very well known. But he did where he kind of broke out from his own company, Off-White, was with a collaboration with Nike called The Ten.
* And I want to say this was, like, 2017-ish. And he came out with this really kind of unstructured design philosophy that kind of broke things down to the basics, but in a very unique, very unique way. And he would do weird things, like, where a Nike Air pocket would be in a shoe, right? Like, they're known for their Nike Air soles. He would put, like, Air on the side of the shoe. Or the shoelaces say shoelaces on them. And I like, like, you know, it's one of those very big discussion points, right? I would always think of it. I don't know if this is the right way, but I would always think of Abloh's style in this way. This wasn't the only thing that he did. But when he would do this, which I think I'm probably jumping ahead in your story a little bit, which was, like, Off-White was the brand that he created as well as working as a creative director at other brands. But I always kind of found Off-White's, the work that he did to be quite ironic. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Kind of what he was going for. But that created a style of its own, which is kind of incredible, really. Yeah, and for some reason, it really stuck with people when there's a chance that these could have been just completely panned, right? Yeah. They could have been just completely like, oh, what is this guy doing? These are ridiculous. And one of the other design elements is for some reason, and I still don't know the exact reason why, he added zip ties to a lot of products. And that's just something that I thought was fascinating. And I've always loved this design and, you know, just the ideas behind it. So I've always wanted to do something like that. But I was worried, could I do it in a pen and make it work? Because, like, the basic idea is just let me make a very, very simple pen that just says pen on it. And, you know, like, I found the font that he used. It's Helvetica Noia. I don't know if it's pronounced new or Noia.