Neighborhood Series: Fordham Road
Each week we’ll talk about some of the inspiration behind our neighborhood series designs. We started this series in early 2017 because we wanted people to have a greater connection to home. Being able to rep your city is huge, and going block by block would be a near impossible task with all of the streets in The Bronx, so being able to create designs that could remind people of the neighborhood they grew up in (or are currently living in) was a huge goal of ours.
We create designs to remind people of the neighborhood they grew up in, or are currently living in.
Our initial in-house design approach has been to have designs reduced to 1 or 2 colors. For us, being able to communicate a feeling with the least amount of colors let’s us know that the design is doing the heavy lifting rather than the colors immediately invoking a certain emotion. It also allows us to either remix the design or have different colorways, with the tees, hoodies and sweatshirts serving as the canvas for the artwork as well as the color of the garment itself giving some depth to the piece. This, however, does not factor into our collaborations. For collabs, the artists we work with drive the design process, and we’ll tweak elements here and there but won’t keep an artist from representing themselves through color.
About Our Design
This week, we’re looking at our “Fordham Road” design. It’s an in-house design, but also only has one option as far as colorway.
If you’ve been on Fordham, then you know the Loew’s Paradise Theatre. Built in 1929, at one point was New York City’s largest movie theatre, this NYC landmark was home to many concert venues. It also is on the Grand Concourse and not on Fordham Road, but it’s still associated with Fordham. The original design on the front of the building is a sunrise on a blue sky with the pink neon “Loew’s Paradise Theatre” arched and centered. Wanting to stick to 2 colors and make a nod to this iconic building, we decided to exclude the sunrise but keep the lines and semi-circle at the bottom. The blue background representing the sky is contrasted by the infrared “Fordham Road”, perfectly mimicking the original sign.
Now in contrast to some of our other in-house designs, this one only has one colorway. We felt that because the original sign is so iconic, the best way to reference it would be to keep the same colors. We also felt that the heather grey sweatshirt was the best option as the canvas for this design. We may add a vintage white sweatshirt as an option and possibly introduce the design as a hoodie and tee in the future, but the design will remain the same.
What do you think of this design? What colorways or other garments should we print this on? Let us know in the comments below.
