Musings: Doing Something About It

Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.

Super inspiring thoughts from Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and father of the video game industry:

Hexanine: Nolan Bushnell Quote

Presenting SUPER iam8bit: More Art Inspired by Classic Video Games of the ’80s

Video games are no longer a niche market. They’re big business, having long-since eclipsed Hollywood blockbusters in revenue. Culturally, we’ve grown used to video game franchises with their own storylines, plots, and characters — a complex web of merchandising, marketing, and gameplay.

It’s easy to forget that these paths were forged by a cast of simple, clever little characters of ’80s videogames. Their screen time may have been short, but Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Mario, and many other characters were bursting with personality, fun, and an ethos that we wanted to capture in the book, SUPER iam8bit: More Art Inspired By Classic Video Games of the ’80s. With our client-partners and co-publishers, iam8bit, we designed the entire volume, helped curate the mass of excellent artwork, and launched our creative imprint, Plastic Highway.

For more details about this project, power up to our iam8bit portfolio page.

And if that’s not enough ’80s video game goodness for you, be sure to check out iam8bit’s 5th art show in Los Angeles, where the book will be officially released and available for sale.

Behind The Design: Our SUPER iam8bit Book

We’re wrapping up the production on a book we’ve designed called “SUPER iam8bit: More Art Inspired By Classic Video Games of the ’80s.” The book was written by our partners at iam8bit. Hexanine designed the entire volume, from cover to cover, and we’re also co-publishing it under our new Plastic Highway imprint.

While the book won’t be officially released until next month, here are some fun moments we’ve had during the process:

Super iam8bit cover shoot

Read on…

New iam8bit Print Work Added

GDC poster series for iam8bit

We’ve just added our poster series project for iam8bit to the Hexanine portfolio. Follow the link for more iconographic video game fun.

Our Game Developers Conference posters revealed

Hexanine iam8bit Game Developers Conference Posters

We collaborated with marketing partners iam8bit to create and design a set of four commemorative posters that will serve as giveaway items for each of the attendees of the 25th annual Game Developers Conference. The limited-edition posters are jam-packed with classic and modern video games references, a kind of scavenger-hunt that tromps through 40 years of video game history. More info on the posters and conference can be found here.

More Inspiring Retro Packaging

Atari Video Checkers Artwork

One of the great things about design is its ability to act as a window in time, for us to get a taste of what that era was like. If we’re old enough, those combinations of words and images conjure up powerful memories, associations and emotions. Great design does that.

Read on…