charley in a box

this may not be a product of the chez-sucre-chez studio, but it sure is an inspiration:


my friend jen pointed these out to me.
holy-yes, charley harper products at old navy. i wanted to buy them all, but i ended up getting just these two (to start).
let me tell you a little story about kj and mister charley harper --
years ago, when i worked as a nyc public school teacher, my school library got a grant for a complete overhaul, which it really did need. there were books in there that hadnt been checked out since the 70's (i am not exaggerating). well, i found myself at the head of the committee whose responsibility it was to decide which books stayed and which ones went. there were a lot of gems in that library, and i found quite a few books that the kids were most likely never going to touch, but that i thought were absolutely brilliant from a design or illustration point of view. so, i rescued a lot of those books from the dumpster and took them home to play with. mostly, i cut them up and made collages and postcards out of them. (and you can see some of them in this old post.)
well about a year or two after i had cut up those books, i looked through the small stack of remaining postcards and marveled at these particular illustrations. i decided that they were so great that i NEEDED another copy of that book. so i did the research, found out it was charley harper (whom i had never heard of) and then cruised around on ebay to see if i could find that book.
um, yes, i did find it --- for an average price of $300.
DAMMIT!
i ended up finding a slightly cheaper weird library copy of the book and i did buy it. and then a couple of years later i also got the gigantic charley harper coffee table book. (the one that todd oldham did.)
and now i am scooping up these really sweet products from old navy.
if you dont know the work of mister harper, i suggest you check it out. it really is amazing. (you can get started here.)