In case you missed it, we recently published a portfolio piece for CRUMB — the hottest new cafe and patisserie in Lambton. In collaboration with Ben Richardson from Autumn Rooms, and Gareth Williams from Covered in Crumbs we developed a brand, marketing strategy and packaging design that is just as sweet as their pastries.
Exhausted from the greasy, multi-fingered and creatively bankrupt slop of the rise of AI, we saw this brand as an opportunity to reinvest in the other end of the spectrum. The totally human. The honest mistakes. The mess. Every piece of typography within the CRUMB brand was created with just a pencil and paper. In an era of stifling attempts to create perfection, there is joy and camaraderie in the unrefined.
Merchandising is hard. As a designer, it can be difficult to resolve the tension of creating things in a world already bursting at the seams with stuff. In a bold lateral move, Headjam chose again to invest in a less conventional idea—bring screen printing into the office!
Fitting out the creative space with a selection of tech from xTool, we developed a complete screen printing setup that utilises laser engraved screen mesh, and traditional heat pressing to create bespoke apparel and merchandise. A tantalising amount of control to say the least. Over a few days of smeared prints, jeans that will never look the same again, and very sore feet we developed the workflow and skills to begin screen printing small-run, up cycled apparel.
This combination of process and up cycled apparel creates a uniquely offbeat opportunity. Standing in front of a pile of old tees, there are endless ways to remix, blast over, play-off-of, edit, ignore, or highlight the existing (or just barely still existing) graphics. In a new kind of thinking, you stare at a shirt and wonder, does this 2000’s clipart pig give me CRUMB vibes? Is this Vinnie’s button up kind of giving that Melbourne festival vibe? Can I get CRUMB on this barely-there pashmina fabric?
Each garment is printed by hand. The hand sometimes makes mistakes, but CRUMB is all about the creative mistakes. Not enough ink and you get an interesting texture, too much ink and you get an even more interesting texture. Neglecting a first layer of white makes the print feel like its already been there for years—a strange vision of the future ‘up cycled, up cycled’ tee.
This simple idea at its core aims to resolve some of the discomfort the design industry has yet to confront—that we’re often making more things than people will ever want or need. Having screen printed the word CRUMB a hundred times over, there’s a glimpse of a different future. One where apparel acts as a cultural relic, layered with years of ideas and dreams, worn and mended and reprinted until the only purpose it could ever hope to fulfil is that of a rag.
Read more about CRUMB branding, or if you are curious about our screen printing process or have a project in mind get in touch.