Blue Ocean Yachting: Stickers Seen 'Round the World

Yachting is the dream of many people from around the world. For Luke Hammond--who currently serves as the First Officer on a 171' yacht with a gloal itinerary--it's a way of life. His dream was to fill the need for a global yachting portal on the Worldwide Web with information, news and social networking opportunities serving the global maritime industry.

Towards that end, Hammond teamed up with a younger sibling, who happened to have a background in advertising and design. The website, Blue Ocean Yachting, which was launched Feb 2010, features breaking news on sport sailing, piracy, and famous boats spotted worldwide, among other things--along with social networking, information and resources for the jet set who sail the ocean blue. The business is virtual, but it's based (like so many great luxury yachts) out of Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Hammond's strategy for using custom stickers is simple: he makes sure they get placed in ports and destinations for yachting types all over the world, guerilla marketing style. As of now, you're likely to find stickers for Blue Ocean Yachting all over the Caribbean ports, including Sint Maarten, the British and US Virgin Islands; soon, you'll find them in ports all over Europe.

"Using Custom Sticker Makers was easy and cost effictive," said Hammond. "As well, the stickers came out just the way my artwork had shown them to be."

Learn more at http://www.blueoceanyacthing.com/

SB 1070 Sticker Wars! Part 1: Root Concepts Takes on Human Rights

There's been plenty in the news recently about Arizona's SB 1070 immigration law. The law--intended to aid police in identifying and charging illegal immigrants--allows law-enforcement officers to require anyone they might "reasonably suspect" of being in the US illegally to show identifying papers.

Opposition to this bill has been widespread, leading groups as diverse as the American Immigration Lawyers Association to many Major League Baseball teams to join the now near-viral call to boycott Arizona. The bill is believed by many to infringe on the human rights of the citizens of Arizona (and those of Hispanic descent in particular) while clearing the way for state-sanctioned racial profiling.

Of course, there are two sides to every issue--and any hotly contested political topic eventually winds up being debated on the nation's bumpers. Towards that end, our sister company, Root Concepts, recently weighed in on the law with a new design: Repeal SB 1070--Respect Human Rights!

The design incorporates elements of the Arizona state flag, playing on a similar, non-political sticker expressing state pride, common throughout AZ. This makes it a sticker with a clear message: I love Arizona, but I don't support SB 1070.

Root Concepts founder and CEO Jeff Daverman reports, on the Root Concepts blog, "As long time Arizona residents, we thought it especially important to lend our voice in opposition to this unAmerican, unconstitutional law. Our opposition to Arizona SB 1070 comes primarily from the belief that every day this law is enforced the human rights of individuals living in this country will be violated. We believe this law allows law enforcement and those who support it to look at human beings (even if they are 'illegals') in a disconnecting, dehumanizing way."
Interested in the other side of the debate? Stay tuned for our next post, SB 1070 Sticker Wars, Part 2: Voices from the Right.

Stuff We Like: PE3L Magazine

It started out as a humble 1/2 size black and white photocopied zine back in 2003 documenting street art with a focus on stickers. In the time since then, PEEL Magazine has grown up into a glossy, internationally distributed publication featuring the work of some very cool sticker artists from all over the world.

Originally inspired by the “Andre the Giant has a Posse” stickers Dave and Holly Combs encountered all over New York City when they traveled from Indianapolis, Indiana, to help with the Sept. 11 recovery, the couple set out to document a powerful new subset of street art, and in the process may have created something of movement themselves. Each issue of PEEL features sticker art, interviews with artists, and even free, super-cool art stickers (29 in the latest, Issue 8)--i.e., pages upon pages of stickers for grown ups. How cool is that?

PEEL even has its own book, PEEL: The Art of the Sticker, and now, an upcoming documentary film by award winning filmmaker Brian Dockter--proof of just how far street and sticker art has come in the last seven years.