I’ve always loved the slice of Americana that is pop art. I wish there were more opportunities in my daily design career to utilize the style, but the fact is, there just aren’t that many instances where it would be appropriate. Even the great pop artists (as we’ve come to know them) such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and, of course, Andy Warhol, used the pop art movement as art, not the way modern designers use art in their designs.

That said, whenever I get the chance to delve into that arena I really enjoy it. I designed this BMW shirt for an E30 fan. It’s definitely not of the same caliber of the true pop artists, but it was fun to work on just the same.

In a weird coincidence, my local Autozone is currently running a special where if you buy a bottle of a certain brand of fuel injector cleaner and an air filter, you get a free air freshener. As luck would have it, I happened to go in there Tuesday night to purchase those two items, unrelated to the totally random promotion.

Honest.

Well, at the checkout I was allowed to pick from an aromatic bin full of tree-shaped air fresheners, and chose the one that seemed the least obtrusive – “the Designer Series.” After pulling the product off the cardboard backing I found that my choice came with a free designer gift: a gold tree-shaped decal.

I realize that the concept of time as we know it isn’t over, but I’m pretty sure this will stand out as one of the worst promotional ideas ever. Unless you’re a sixteen year old guy with your first new car, does anyone really actually like the concept of these little trees? They block your field of view if you hang it from your rear view mirror, or blow around distractingly in any breeze.

What are the chances that I’m going to permanently mount a gold-foil version of this item to my car? In fact, the only benefit of these products is that some of them smell slightly less offensive than Pine-Sol, but a decal doesn’t even have that.

Could there be a better way to get their point across?

So ever since I bought the old convertible, the condition of the top has been in a constant downward spiral. This last fall, in an effort to not only dress up the car a little bit, and (gasp) try to make it watertight, I bought a replacement top from someone in town who wasn’t quite up to the challenge themselves. Or, maybe it was that they were smarter than I was. Either way, I tried to document the process for posterity. Oh, by the way, the helpful guide that I used was found on the Share-A-Project web site.

Photos after the jump. Read the rest »