GET LOST
Dear Readers,
“Get Lost” is the theme of this issue and
one of the core statements of the brand “Emily the Strange”
and its originators Rob Reger and Buzz Parker. With their notoriously
bad tempered comic icon they created a pop cultural phenomenon
which developed from reduced t-shirt motifs and self printed
stickers into an unforeseen success. However, the two designers
didn’t walk in the same worn-out paths. In accordance to
their identity and origin, their searched for a way, the goal
of which was neither predestined nor even visible. They re-created
themselves and their figure – and yet stayed true to what
they believed in.
Nowadays, it is not really
difficult to get lost in the jungle of the numerous brands and
the thicket of information. Many labels strive for the attention
of new customers and consumers. A similar behaviour can be noticed
among the retailers and thus affects the attitude of the consumers.
Today, however, the forest is very ample und confusing. Many
people think it’s best to walk in the traditional, safe
paths, but they don’t realize how boring this habit has
become. It is important to make this step, to make the first
step at all. To go astray from the ordinary, to lose your way
sometimes, to end up in a one way street, to restore yourself
in fear but to explore certain things, which only a few people
have seen before, and to rejoice in your experiences at the next
glade. To make a rest, to reconsider things, to find a new orientation
and to cope with the newly made experiences leads to another
new way, tells a story. It needs a certain amount of attention,
a certain type of self awareness, which isn’t oriented at
others or runs after them. This attention can be achieved in
many ways; creation and innovation are the keywords here. However,
many brands, stores and customers even lack an identity at all.
Often one’s own identity gets lost in watery ideas, because
of half-baked compromises or because of wrongly interpreted expectations
– be it on the part of the customers, the retailers or the
brands. Unfortunately it is mostly financial or social restraints
which constrict your own courage and bars you from running into
the dark forest without a template, without navigation, just
relying on your own instincts.
The first step is always the most difficult, but it’s always worth it. No matter whether you cannot see the woods for all the trees trees, or the brushwood is so thick, that you’d have problems to find you way back. This is about your own way, which, as such, is the actual goal. And even when you reached it, there will always be the next forest you should get lost in!