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I was so fortunate to get the opportunity to answer a few questions for the amazing Entrepreneur Extraordinaire, Jason Sadler who is actually tentatively legally named "Jason Headsetsdotcom" for a little while longer until he auctions off his last name for another lucky high bidder! 

It was really great getting the chance to answer some questions about my history, process and goals for 55 Hi's and it's interesting how interviews with good questions like this are oddly cathartic and I always end up discovering things consciously that I didn't even realize I knew. 

If you aren't aware of his site or what he has going on over there check it out! He's currently in the process of writing a book called "Creativity For Sale" where he'll be sharing stories about how he got paid to wear t-shirts for a living for nearly five years, how he auctioned off his last name, and a bunch of other stories featuring creative entrepreneurs (like 55 Hi's!) he's connected with along the way. We were fortunate enough to grab a page sponsorship in the book on lucky page 55!!

We are as excited as ever to release a new product line for 55 Hi's, Notepads! Introducing a series of 4 typographic notepads designed in collaboration with guest typographer, Dave Foster. The 4 new themes we made are Things To Do, Market List, Today, and The Shit To-Do List!

Each notepad is offset printed in the USA with certified soy and vegetable based inks on paper created from sustainably managed forests. 70 sheets per notepad with a rigid cardboard backer and they measure 4"x8" tall. 

Dave was also kind enough to send over some progress of his while he was sketching the designs. It's always a pleasure to get a peek behind the curtain in the process of creating and below Dave shows us a bunch of different iterations that were all equally amazing in their own right.

Akitas, Boxers, and Chihuahuas! We are so happy and proud to introduce our newest alphabet poster, Dogs! Illustrated in collaboration with Lydia Nichols, this jam packed poster features 26 furry little canines of all different breeds. Each letter of the alphabet is paired with a custom illustration and accompanied by a fun fact you can use to impress your friends.

For instance, did you know that a Boxer named Brandy holds the record for the world's longest dog tongue, which is an astonishing 17 inches long?! Or that contrary to their cute exterior, Dachshunds were originally bred as fierce small game hunters?

There's more! Zeus the Great Dane was noted in the 2013 Guinness Book of World Records as the world's tallest dog. He measured 44 inches tall at the shoulder, and when standing on his hind legs could stretch up to 7 feet 4 inches! 

Lydia was kind enough to do a likeness of our intern, Maddie, for the French Bulldog breed. When Lydia asked, "is there anything unique about Maddie I could have her doing in the illustration?", the first thing I thought was how much she farts. I'm pretty sure excessive farting is a normal trait of a French Bulldog and Maddie is no exception, she can drop some bombs. Here she is below showing her displeasure at her depiction.

As always, we like to include a little proces of our bigger releases and this one was equally fascinating to me. The transformation from sketch to final product is so interesting and Lydia makes it look easy. It's no easy task drawing up 26 unique dog breeds, using 4 colors, and still having a sense of color balance for the poster as a whole. Below are a few before and afters of the sketch to final. 

Each poster is an 18x24, 4-color, Limited Edition Screenprint on thick Stardream Lagoon paper. Hand numbered in an edition of 500. The dogs breeds in the poster are Akita, Boxer, Chihuaha, Dachshund, English Bulldog, French Bulldog, Great Dane, Harrier, Irish Setter, Jack Russell, King Shepherd, Labrador, Maltese, Newfoundland, Otterhound, Pug, Queensland Heeler, Retriever, Saint Bernard, Toy Poodle, Utonoga, Vizsla, Welsh Terrier, Xoloitzcuintle, Yorkshire Terrier, Zuchon.

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Besides that, we are happy to introduce our newest art poster, Wake Up! I don't know how you wake up, but just like a Foldgers commercial, after hitting the snooze button 18 times, I usually wake up, zombie walk to the kitchen, karate chop my coffee maker 'til it turns on, and then smell the coffee. After taking a nap in the shower and gaining some semblance of consciousness, only then do I even attempt to resurrect a drinkable cup of coffee.

I'm currently using a percolator, but I'm thinking of asking Santa to help make the switch to a Keurig this Christmas. I'm not a coffee snob, whatever is less hassle and less coffee grounds everywhere. I can make quite a mess while trying to fill the percolator with my eyes closed in the morning.

Each poster is a 2-color screenprint measuring 18x24" on Natural White paper. Hand numbered in a Limited Edition of 500.

We are also hard to work on a bunch of new goodies coming out in the following months. If you follow us on Instagram, we're breaking out the brushes and custom type for a bunch of new releases with a whole grab bag of awesome new folks. One we're tackling is a collection of new bookmark designs... 

Getting the chance to work with other designers through 55 Hi's is one of the most rewarding parts of running this business. For instance, the closest to release is our new Dogs poster we just finished up with Lydia Nichols. Should be out sometime early next week and here's a small teaser. This poster is so fun and interesting to read. Dog breeds are tricky and Lydia did an absolutely amazing job capturing the personality of each dog.

Further down the horizon, is a series of notepad designs we started up with typographer extraordinaire, Dave Foster. If you are unaware of Dave Foster, watch this video of his explaining a little background of his typographic career. Really enlightening stuff to see just how much goes into the study of typography.

We are still the midst of designing, but here's a little look at a few of the early options for the "Today" notepad design. Really excited to get into another product avenue and can't wait to see where they all end up in the coming weeks.

Last but not least, we're having a clearance on coasters. 55 Hi's is getting out of the coaster business, and we're running a 60% Off sale until they're sold out, never to be printed again! Well, actually I can't say that, but for right now, coasters are a difficult sell for us, and not something I had 100% of my heart into growing as a product avenue. So, for the time being, we're gonna switch gears, try out a few other products, and as always, concentrate on posters and cards that rock your socks off. 

After the success of The Space Alphabet Poster release last month, we got right back into the swing of things for the second installment of our alphabet series and got to work on Dinosaurs! We went back to Brad Woodard of Brave the Woods AGAIN for help illustrating this beast, and as always, he absolutely knocked it out of the park. 

Each letter of the alphabet in this poster is paired with a custom illustration and interesting fun fact you can use to impress your friends. The dinosaur names feature a pronunciation guide so you don't sound silly doing it (cause some of these names can get pretty ridiculous). For instance, X is for Xenotarsosaurus [zee-noh-TAR-suh-SAWR-us] and it literally means "lizard with a strange ankle". He drew the short straw on the name front.

Want to know a few facts you will gain reading through this maze of knowledge? How about this: Kronosaurus was a 30 foot long carnivorous marine reptile and its muscular jaws were packed with 3-12 inch long razor sharp teeth.

Or did you know that contrary to how they have been displayed in popular culture (cough cough Jurassic Park cough cough), Velociraptors were actually quite small, standing roughly a foot and a half tall and weighing only about 33 pounds (like the size of a chicken on steroids). Its most famous feature was the relatively large sickle-shaped claw on each foot which it likely used to slash open its prey. 

Check out more pictures, dinos, or pick up a poster over in the shop or by clicking right here. And as always, if you have a theme or alphabet idea you wanna see made, let me know via Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and we'll try to make it happen!

It's that time of year again! The annual 55 Hi's calendar is upon us. This year, after careful deliberation, we decided to go with the theme Junk Food, cause who can resist junk food every now and then? 

Chris Sandlin, the man behind SockMonkee, made a triumphant return to help us out again this year illustrating 6 of the characters for the calendar. It was great to have him back from two years ago when we did The 2012 Monster Calendar which was our first foray into this themed calendar business. 

Chris and I started talking about this late last year and we have been hard at work illustrating and designing these characters ever since. In case you aren't totally familiar with how our calendars work, each character is inspired by a well known event, holiday, or common theme of the month it represents. Chris and I trade off months with him starting things off with his Party Pizza Slice for January. We each do 6 characters and combine them to form one big calendar.

Process is always something I really enjoy seeing and throughout the drawing of these characters, I took screenshots so you can see the evolution of them being finished. Above are the sketches and final products for all my monthly character contributions. Clockwise from top left: Frankencorn, Back To School Candy Apple, Christmas Cookie, It's Raining Jaw Breakers!, Candy Heart Colin, and Donut Dad with his little donut-hole children. Below is some process of Chris's sketching for his characters.

I suppose if you follow 55 Hi's at all, it's no secret that we work with Mama's Sauce for the printing of our goods. For this release, we asked them to do a little behind the scenes documentation and they were kind enough to oblige. The specs for this here calendar is a 16x24, 5-color screenprint on Sweet Tooth Paper from French Paper Co. Five colors is the most we have ever printed at 55 Hi's and it's been exciting seeing it come together one color at a time.

As you can see, these posters are printed the hard way. Each color is hand mixed and matched to a Pantone and then printed one poster at a time, one color at a time, while keeping a constant eye on the prints to make sure one of the seven million problems that can arise during screen printing aren't happening.

After you print the first color, and let the sheets dry, you put them in a an enormous stack like the one below, and get to printing again. Dry and repeat 4 more times. 

When I first started 55 Hi's, and did my own printing in-house, registering that many colors at once was a little out of my league. Each time a color is printed, if you are even a little off register, it effects how the color after it is going to sit, and if you mess up early in the game, you can end up with a whole bunch of misprints by the third color.

Now, we leave that sort of thing up to the professionals, and since it's not our arms doing the squegee pulling anymore, we decided to go all out and bring back a full palette of candy colored goodness.

Here are a few shots 3 & 4 colors into the process. With this particular poster, the black is really what brings everything together and the colors don't really look all that great, or even make sense, until the last color get put down. The black outline is always the most gratifying cause it feels like a magic trick after every pull.

You have this really intricate combination of colors that don't make any sense until the screen comes back up and you (hopefully) discover this polished piece of artwork. PACHOW!  That's what I used to say after every pull of the squegee. Ok, fine, I never said that once. You can see what I'm talking about below with the July's hot dog guy. He doesn't even have a face until the last step.

Once all is said and done, we get to trimming, numbering, and packaging! Since our Posters our now Limited Edition, we only print a set amount and that's it for the poster. No more in any color combo or edition will be printed. For these, they are limited to 500 and we hand number each and every one. 

We also decided to bring in a little twist (literally), and package up this special release in a Tootsie Roll inspired Limited Edition packaging. Each one of these is rolled up in a bright candy colored tissue paper and given a custom Junk Food Calendar packaging wrap. Many of these calendars get given as gifts for Christmas and what's better than receiving a tootsie roll Junk Food Calendar!

The Junk Food Calendars are available as desk models too. We had a lot of people interested in past calendars, but weren't able to take them home because of lack of wall space. Well this year, we decided to scale it down a bit and release a hangable desk sized version for offices or cubicles. Each calendar is trimmed down to 4 x 6.25 and comes with a black cotton cord for hanging.

The last item we're releasing today is one we have been getting asked about for a whole year. After the success of last year's Robot Calendar with Justin Mezzell, we decided to bring it back this year in a desk version! Robot Turkey is back!

Super excited to present our latest creation, The Space Alphabet Poster! Venture out into the galaxy with this jam-packed poster of 26 space wonders, each illustrated and accompanied by fun facts and trivia.

This poster measures in at 18x24" and is a 4-color, Limited Edition Screenprint on thick Midnight Blue paper. Each one is hand numbered in an edition of 500.

A few weeks ago, we polled everybody on our Facebook page what themes would be the best for a series of alphabet posters we were thinking of producing and Space came out as a frontrunner by far. That was all we needed and this project was underway.

We went back to Brad Woodard of Brave the Woods for help illustrating this beast. This is his second time working with us (the first time being for our super popular New Arrival Cards for Boys and Girls) and we are excited to start a running series of these alphabet posters with him. Dinosaurs, bugs, video games, cities! The possibilities are endless and we can't wait to tackle them all. Have a suggestion? Tell us about it on Facebook or Twitter.

A friend of 55 Hi's, and resident Space aficionado, Jordan Wittlich provided all the intergalactic fun facts. Want to know what wonders await you? Did you know The International Space Station travels at a speed of roughly 5 miles a second. Or that Mars is the second smallest planet but contains the tallest mountain in our Solar System, Olympus Mons! This whole poster was fun to put together and I hope you dig it!

If you are in the New York area this weekend, stop by and say hi on Saturday, July 27 from 1pm – 6pm in Dumbo to check out the Pop-Up Shop sponsored by Swissmiss & Etsy.  We will be set up down there hanging out and throwing cards at people. There will also be a Smilebooth, DJs and snacks. If you need more info, check out the Facebook Event Page. Should be a good time and it's never to early to get prepared for Christmas, right? 

A couple fun new posters just hit the shop also! Keep on Keepin' On and What's Cooking?  

What's Cooking is a kitchen themed print inspired by retro cookware. It is hand numbered and embossed in a limited edition run of 500. 

We also partnered with Help Ink to do a tandem release of our Keep on Keepin On design. We have partnered with Help Ink before to do a fun kids print that I believe is almost sold out! You can check that one out here and if you pick one up you're also helping a good cause!