‘Blast from the past’ is a retrospective time machine, taking us back for a loving look at some ancient but never to be forgotten design classics.

IT’S 1994…

Pulp Fiction and The Lion King have just hit the cinemas. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are having their ‘special’ relationship, Blur release Parklife, Bob Dylan plays 90’s Woodstock, Tom Hanks is Forrest Gump, Jeff Bezos introduces us to his Amazon idea AND Right Angle start work on the BV Leisure brand design.

B.V. Leisure is an independent toy manufacturer that specialises in jigsaw puzzles and murder mystery games. Our logo design combines these 2 areas, by featuring a pool of blood forming the shape of a jigsaw piece.

Forrest Gump once said something like ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what design yer gonna get’. As it turned out, he was right, due to the success of the branding, we were also asked to create packaging designs for a set of six Adult Drinking Games and a ‘Crossword Jigsaw’ puzzle…

Hakuna Matata, we said – and here’s what happened…

CARDINAL PUFF’S ADULT DRINKING GAMES

A set of six adult drinking games, ‘Blackout’, ‘Drunken Sailor’, ‘Legless’, ‘Out of your Box’, ‘Frog in the Grog’ and ‘Hangover’.

We created and illustrated the ‘Cardinal Puff’ character, taking inspiration from the traditional drinking game of the same name and basing him very loosely on a Bill Clinton / Tony Blair hybrid.

As part of their special relationship, we’ve heard that after a long day of politic-ing, Tony & Bill would enjoy nothing more than winding down for an evening, with a Royale & Cheese, playing drinking games.

CARDINAL PUFF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

BV LEISURE – CROSSWORD JIGSAW

How it came about was all a bit of a Blur, then it came to them as a moment of clear thinking… ‘All the people – so many people’ love Crosswords and many of them also love Jigsaws – the perfect combo, the ‘Crossword Jigsaw’ was born. Once the jigsaw is complete, you then solve the crossword with the set of clues provided – Genius.

We depicted the word ‘crossword’ as the solution to a crossword clue in numbered boxes and introduced a jigsaw piece to form the dot on the ‘i’ of hand-drawn ‘jigsaw’ text.

This product was available from Amazon, however, other reputable retailers were also available. 

That brings us to the end of this episode. If you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and want more of the same self-indulgent design based narrative – ‘The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind’ …watch this space – The dust from Blast from the past #3 archive is being blown away as we speak!