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Contract Cards

It’s been a long time coming but we are so happy and proud to introduce our newest additions to the shop: The Contract Cards. Poor in money but rich in self deprecating gestures? Sign your life away with these customizable contract cards good for multiple occasions. Although the topics are endless, we decided to focus this first series of 6 on Sexy Dances, Body Massages, House Cleanings, Laundry Loads, Makeout Sessions and Servitude.

As if signing yourself up for menial obligations weren’t enough, we decided to add a few terms and agreements to make the contract a little more fun… and definitely embarrassing.

Within each card you will find a customizable binding agreement between two people. You and the Client (or the person you’re giving it to). After filling out the front of the card and adding a few loving notes, you can either sign your life away in advance or wait to review the terms line by line before giving it your John Hancock.

Everyone likes to see how our ideas come to fruition and this one has been quite a while in the making. Originally, frequent collaborator SockMonkee sent over the idea of doing a bunch of sexy cards with the idea that they would be giftable coupon cards that you could cash in at a later date.

The concept really hit home but after doing some digging, it turns out Coupon Cards (like everything else) has already been done before. We could certainly do our own line of Coupon Cards and it would probably be fine but we really strive to put our own 55 Hi’s twist on things to keep it fresh.



Not to be deterred by our Pinterest research on coupon cards, we kept up with the idea for a little bit and discovered that even funnier than the actual coupon was very often the little footnotes that get added to the coupon. For instance, a massage is great but how funny is a massage where the person giving it has to refer to you as “Matt Damon.”

As we kept brainstorming down this path of funny footnotes, what they really started to feel like were terms of a contract. When we just let it naturally go in that direction, the writing for the cards became much easier and more fun. Infusing the communication with our mock legal jargon was a blast and really gave the cards a life of their own.

We finished the first draft and one of the hurdles that we discovered were a lot of the terms that we were coming up seemed like they might polarize an audience. For instance, we had some really great zingers in there about pop culture but not everybody knows Lord of the Rings and cult movie references like we do so many of the jokes felt like they might not hit home with everyone.

Just like the saying, every challenge is another opportunity to make it better, that is exactly what happened here. The concept really started to take on a life of its own when we introduced the ability to customize the card by filling in the blanks. It solved the problem of making the card more interactive and personal while still keeping it funny. In many instances it would be even funnier because inside jokes could be infused into the contract.

The design of the card also took quite a few turns. Initially I wanted to keep all the communication on the front of the card. From a photography/shareability perspective, it’s much easier to digest one image of the card than it is to show the front and the inside. What ended up happening was it became way too busy. We had the theme, the names, the communication, the terms , and the signatures all on an A7 card and the process of filling out the card was confusing with so much information on the front and the problem I was trying to solve was being made worse.

Once we decided to make the front just an attractive scenario of setting up the two parties involved and the inside devoted strictly to terms and signatures, it gave the whole card a lot more balance and us a whole lot more room to add terms.

You can pick up the whole pack here for some pretty amazing savings and if you happen to have some good themes you think would make a great contract card, please share them with us!

Gearing Up

Shot Glass Card Catalog

Things have been a little dormant over here on the surface but believe me, it's the calm before the storm. We decided it was time to refocus our energies and had a serious sit down for the 2015 year. What is feasible? What do we want to make? What's our most popular items? For the last question at least, it was a no brainer: our Shot Glass Cards have been a hands down best seller.

I think sometimes, as a maker, you get lost in the chase of a new great idea and than once you get it, the chase is over and it feels like work. When I made the original shot glass card a little over two years ago, the reception was out of control but after the initial wave, the drive to continue releasing an idea I had already "conquered" (for lack of a better term) felt tired. A true business person would probably exploit a successful idea. Hell, just a reasonable person would probably do that, but I decided to move on to other ideas like an idiot.

Well, now almost two years later, we decided to revisit our most famous release and bring it back with a collection of 12 fun new designs. These will be hitting the shop in the next few weeks. I don't want to release the whole shindig quite yet, but here is a teaser of my favorite one of the bunch.

Shot Glass Card Older & Wiser

Also (and I don't ask for this often) but we are going to be actively pursuing getting these in some shops. We ordered 14,000 of them, which is about 12,000 more than our standard run we are comfortable with so we will be actively trying to throw them at as many people as fast as possible. It was a pretty big leap of faith to make a commitment like this and this means we are going to have to become a little salesman-y for a paragraph. 

If you have a suggestion for a local store you think the Shot Glass Card line would be a great fit for, please do make an introduction or shoot me an email with any info at info@55his.com. In fact, if you have any tips of any kind or anyone who might be into this idea, please let me know. In that email, if you can include your own address, we will send out a free shot glass card for the lead and because you're an amazing person. 

And as always, if you want more updates from us including when the new shot glass cards are hitting the shop, sign up for the newsletter or head over to our Instagram page.

Mythical Creature Alphabet Poster

Happy Halloween! After the temporary hiatus and the cathartic Real Talk blog post, we are excited to be back in action making things and spreading general trivia knowledge to the masses. Although this poster has internally been a long time in the making, we are very excited to celebrate such a spooky season by festively introducing the next installment of the Alphabet Poster series: Mythical Creatures.

We teamed up with friend, illustrator and collaborator Scotty Reifsnyder for this bad boy and it is one of our favorite releases of all time. We have been a long time fan of Scotty's work and it was such a pleasure getting to be a part of and see such an amazing project come to life over the last few months. You can check out more from him on his Dribbble, Twitter, or Website. Amazing stuff over there.

The Mama's Sauce Mythical Team!

To help us bring in this momentous occasion, our friends over at our favorite ink slinging shop, Mama's Sauce, decided to channel their inner mysticalness and dress up as some of the lineup for Halloween!

Making of the Mythical Creatures

It wasn't all just fun and games for this here poster. Around 2 years ago, when Scotty and I started ideating around this idea, we had a ton of fun directions to go in. As you can see in the sketch below, early in the process of making this poster, we toyed around with the idea of putting these characters into picture frames. This idea was meant to be a little reminiscent of a Harry Potter picture frame wall that showcased snapshots of these elusive creatures nobody has ever seen in real life.

 

Sadly, we had to ditch the frame idea because it became pretty apparent that the design might become a little too busy for a poster with 26 illustrations and captions. We didn't want the monsters to get lost in the frames, so Scotty decided to tackle the creatures in a more straightforward fashion. 

Regardless, the illustrations came out amazing and every character has their own little personality and quirk. The Imp is one of my personal favorites. He is a mischievous little creature and Scotty has him stealing money from a poor New Jersey resident's wallet.

Writing fun facts for this poster proved to be quite an adventure. This is for multiple reasons but the biggest one is that the characters in this poster don't actually exist (or do they...), so finding legitimate facts about fictitious material is pretty touchy. We did our best to not step on our own toes, but this is all folklore so we like to think that popular opinion rules. 

For instance, fairies are magical, humanoid beings who are known for their mischievous and sometimes malicious nature. They will often use their words to confuse and mislead but they can be outwitted for it is said a fairy is incapable of telling a lie.

Or since it is Halloween, you should probably be on the lookout for the Headless Horseman. Of the many tales describing the headless horseman, none are quite as grim and disturbing as the Irish dullahan, or "dark man." Galloping through the night and wielding a whip made of a human spine, the dark man claims his victim's life by simply stopping to call out their name. I suppose you can't really defend against that. Bottom line, if you see a guy on a horse at any time, run.

Cha-Cha-Changes

The 55 Hi's shop is proud to announce a number of new changes! One of the first exciting moves we are making is we are now offering new sizes and color variations through our newest non-human team member: Shakakana (Shak for short).

Shak is an Epson 7890 Fine Art Giclée printer that will allow us to start offering posters in different sizes and colors to give everyone a little more variation in old and new releases from 55 Hi's.

We have received a lot of requests over the years for prints and designs that people love but haven't been the right color or size for their room. We have always wanted to accommodate these requests but the largest problem has always been cost and minimum quantities for screenprinting new designs.

Typically when you screenprint something, you pick one size and one color to print because you need to reach a large quantity of any one design to make it worth your while for setup, ink mixing and screen preparation. This has always proved hard for us, because we wanted to offer more things more often, but every new design triples or quadruples our upfront cost if we try to offer more than one variation. That's why in the past, we have resolved to offering one size in one color for all our releases.

After some careful consideration, we decided the best course of action was to move forward offering both printing methods. The Giclée printer will give us the opportunity to offer new designs, more often and at a better price while still retaining a fine art museum quality print. Screenprinting will be a great avenue to continue utilizing specialty printing methods while still retaining our Limited Edition runs of special designs.

So, if you have some time, take a look around at all the new variations and fun color alternatives we now offer. There is so many more things in the pipeline now that we have Shak. We can't wait to share. 

The Traveler's Alphabet

Happy to introduce our newest addition to the lineup of growing alphabet posters: The Traveler's Alphabet. 

Travel the world in style with this collection of 26 automotive marvels from all around the world. Whether it's a Vespa from Italy or a pack of sled dogs from Alaska, you will be a well versed traveler in no time after reading up on the most interesting facts and trivia from these common modes of transportation. 

It's been an interesting year releasing these alphabet posters but the other day I took a look at our lineup and I was really proud of what we have going on here. The series as a whole is starting to look pretty great! I felt it a great opportunity to take a second to thank everyone who has participated (and/or bought) one of these bad boys during the road of fabricating these. A special thanks goes out to the illustrators Brad Woodard, Lydia Nichols, Scotty Reifsnyder and Dave Perillo for being a part of this shindig.

 

Calendars!

In all the shuffle this year we dropped a few balls and one of those dropped balls was we didn't coordinate a new calendar. Bummer. To make up for this egregious error, we worked up 2015 version of the 3 previous years calendars. The other great news is they are all available in a bunch of different big-ass sizes! We have 16x24, 18x27, and 24x36 sizes available. Check out the Monsters, Junk Food, or Robot Calendars in all their glory!

Facebook, You Suck

That's a little harsh, but I'm sticking to it.

Now let me preface this generally pessimistic blog post by noting, I realize I am complaining about a free service I am in no way obligated to use. This blog post is coming more from a disappointment standpoint about something that was great and is now ruined and why we won't be tending to the Facebook community any more.

Also, I think this topic has been covered to death by many but I feel it's worth spreading shitty business practice just for the principle. Or, at least what I would consider shitty business practice. I'm not going to say it's extortion, but it feels a little extortion-esque to me. If you want to hear a really great, well researched version of this argument check out this video.

4 years ago when we started 55 Hi's, Facebook was amazing. It was a great, interactive tool to get feedback on releases and show people what we were working on. People who elected to like our page (which you can unlike at any time and stop receiving our updates) would have the opportunity to see our updates. If the post was successful and people liked it, the content would spread to their friends or have the opportunity to gain a little traction for being a popular item. 

 

Now, the 55 Hi's Facebook page has around 5,600 likes and a typical post will reach around 80 people. A successful post that is liked, commented, or shared will typically reach around 150 people. This means that our content is reaching on average less than 2% of the audience that has already elected to receive updates from us by liking the page. Essentially, even if you like the page, you won't get our content anyway so the whole process is really pretty trivial.

We will posting most of our updates via Instagram, Dribbble and the Newsletter. It's such a sad thought to think Facebook bought Instagram and will likely follow suit soon with restricting content unless you pay them. Nevertheless, it's the best avenue to spread our content now without being a disruptive marketer. If you want to join our very non-spammy newsletter, you can do that here as well. We typically email around once a month.

Also, here's a picture of the Facebook board members as they read my post. 

Smooth Operator

Had a lot of fun over the weekend painting a batch of these Smooth Operator mugs. This design is actually a remix from a prior design we did for one of our whiskey tumblers. It started as just simply "Smooth" but that's a little too Michael Jackson and not enough Sade so we decided to revisit it.

You can pick one up right here. We have 12 in stock at the moment and depending on how they are received, we may not make them again!

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