Any genres appealing to you lately?
Pens. Is pens a genre? Let me write that down and nibble on the idea.
Genre, theme, time period, phrase, emotion, whatever. Pens is perfect.
I am going to make a few assumptions before I start. First, I assume that you have enough pens laying around to know what they look like. I am well aware you are a fan of writing implements, since that is how I ended up getting my first artisan cap. The second assumption comes from a little Geekhack stalking. I went through your posts and learned some stuff about you. You like pens, vinyl, artsyfartsy extracurriculars, prefer cats, are married, are white, have a linnie, enjoy hifi audio stuff. The assumption is that you are way too much like me. Seriously. I assume that, based on this, your house is furnished with disjointed themes, you drift from project to project, do fine in public but prefer solitude, and have an SO with an advanced degree in ornithology.
The obvious choice for cap design would be something using the distinct nib shape of a fountain pen. The idea that focuses solely on the nib would be a nib encased in resin a la something found in a museum gift shop
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.
But this idea limits the number of colors possible. You could change the color of the nib, but the clear resin would have to stay that way. It also presents some casting problems for multiple injected colors. It might work as a mixed media cap, but that would require a change of pace for you.
How about a nip on top of the cap? Simple, recognizable, and elegant. But this doesn't have the Binge
TM appeal. Maybe we need to spice it up a bit.
I've always wondered why no one puts a layer of textured shapes underneath a sculpture layer. An intricate repeated/tessellated pattern underneath a simple object could really make it pop. For example, let's look at some University of Alabama branding.
Here is the Alabama A
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And here is some houndstooth
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The A is a bold logo on a single color background, but look at how it jumps out at you when we combine them.
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Time for more inspiration. Let's look at something that is related to pens but doesn't focus on the nib.
Here and
here are some good links to vintage ink bottles. Something I noticed about the older ones, is that you can see a definite shift from Art Noveau styling to Late Modern labels.
This is a nice little reference for important design styles.
If we pull this all together, we need some work music. I'm pulling more from the post-war style, so I think some jazzy swing is in order. Let's try something
industrious on for size, and if that doesn't suit you, let's try a little modern
electroswing to get that heyday mood in full
swing!
I did a quick mockup of what I have stitched together. I chose to do a nib leaking ink onto the far side of the cap with an intricate repeating pattern. The pattern are some arrows that I liked on a bottle of Carter's Rytoff from one of those sources.
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Hand drawn isn't my thing. Don't judge me. I see you judging me!
I'm not saying you should do this, but it is where the combination of those ideas sent me.
I hope this sparks something.