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Written by: Erika Lizette
DETROIT MEETS CHICAGOAt EForest this past June, I had the pleasure of meeting (and partying with) Detroit artist Jimmy Vuong from JVisuals! We traded our Forest pins that we each designed and right away I could tell he was a great guy and talented artist. A few weeks later, Misha from EVOL Chicago calls me and says, "Jimmy is going to hit you up about a possible collab!" I thought to myself, Sweet! I was excited to see what we could come up with. A STORM IN THE BRAINWhen we heard DirtyBird was coming to Chicago in September for the Bird House Festival, we knew we wanted to pay tribute to Detroit native and founder of DirtyBird Records, Claude VonStroke, as well as Gene Ferris, a Chicago House icon. We started out brainstorming and throwing around some fun ideas, everything from love birds, cracked eggs opening into baby birds, candles symbolizing the underground techno scene, Chicago buildings, and Detroit colors. We wanted something more original than just the egg, but we wanted to keep it true to DB style for fans.
THE DESIGN PROCESSWe were all running around festival hopping and working events in July, so most of our ideas were just in our heads at that time. Finally, it came down to sketch something out on paper. I took the first stab at turning our ideas into something more concrete. I sketched out two of the state birds, a robin from Michigan (Detroit) and a cardinal from Illinois (Chicago), hanging out together listening to some tech house. Sidenote: Even though Jimmy was swamped with his own pin releases and shipping/packaging while also working full-time as a mental health therapist, he was so awesome to work with and never once complained about us contacting him to share ideas back and forth. Nothing but love for JVisuals! Our design process continued. Jimmy took Erika's paper sketch and drew it out with his own stylistic flare and from there, we tweaked the birds a bit and added details to the house. We needed to keep in mind how we wanted the house to glow in the dark and balance the Detroit colors with the Chicago palette.
production: it's all in the detailsWe knew we wanted a limited edition variant and something special for all the techno fam! This was my first time doing rainbow anodized metal linework and now I'm hooked. Jimmy suggested doing a black glow which ended up creating a black matte look, perfect for that underground scene. We landed on the original variant with white glow limited edition of 100, while the rainbow variant black glow has a limited edition of only 50 made! All in all, this was an awesome collab and great opportunity to create something unique for our DirtyBird fam! Can't wait to do it again ;-)
TECH BIRD HOUSE DROPS TONIGHT!Drops tonight Wednesday, Sept 5 @8pm CT! Good luck! PURCHASE AT THE LINK BELOW. http://www.evolchicago.com/store/p128/dirtybird-tech-bird-house
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