David and Jeff are two dudes I respect a ton but inevitably fall into the category of “competition”… not that it’s a bad thing. Both run Titel Media but are perhaps more well known for their foundation and work behind their two biggest entities, High Snobiety and Selectism. Despite being our biggest competitor (in relation to Hypebeast of course), no big deal, we have a more than amicable relationship which has extended back a few years. Jeff gets down with the best of them and once you get a few drinks in him no telling what’s happening next. My first time I linked up with him… I ended up in a taxi van with a duo of Caliroots-running Swedes rocking out to Journey while in Las Vegas haha. To close off 2009, they sent out a pack of coasters which actually contains a little bit of history and pedigree behind the whole manufacturing process. I’ll leave it to this post on Selectism to give you the run down:
The coasters were run off on Michael’s early 1966 Vandercook SP20 Press using coaster stock. Each sheet housed four coasters which were then cut on a vintage Challenge Advance Guillotine Cutter and corners were rounded using a new old stock 60’s Lassco Corner Cutter. The finished coasters were then hand banded and glue to form. Not surprisingly, we ran out of the inital run but plan on pressing more in the New Year. Many thanks to Michael for an amazing job.
The unfortunate aspect of all this is that I rarely if ever entertain guests and don’t have any nice coffee tables to preserve haha, but a cool little memento nevertheless. Few if any media outlets ever crossover into the realm of products (for retail) despite the fact many of my industry peers are focused on exactly that, products. It’s a tough thing to pull off well and something you see very infrequently outside of Japan. From one aspect, the fact that the item or collaboration is so biased, the core group of people interested in the product itself is usually rather niche. Speaking strictly on behalf of Hypebeast, the term Hypebeast is still relatively a negative connotative term, I still view Hypebeast as something everybody reads but not everybody is willing to admit to. That’s fine by me and I understand that haha. But furthermore, creating something that is quintessentially representative of the “brand” with a shirt that has a Hypebeast logo on it… what does that really bring to the table… not a lot in my opinion.
About to roll out soon for New Year’s Eve… hope you all have a good one.
-Eugene
