← All work Project 2 of 5 · Trading pins

Pins worth trading for.

Youth baseball teams · tournament trading pinsIllustration and pin design · hard enamel, tournament after tournamentFrom the shelf: the rest of it

Players swap pins in the stands, so a pin nobody wants is a pin that comes home.

Role
Designer and illustrator
Made
Pins for teams from Hermosa Beach to Muscle Shoals · hard enamel, glitter fills where the sun should catch
Hard part
A whole roster's numbers and a team's home town on something the size of a coin

The story ↓

The brief

Start from the place.

Youth baseball teams take a pin to tournaments and the players trade them, so the pin has to be worth wanting. Each one starts from where the team is from: the state, the coast, the thing the town is known for.

What I did

Draw for enamel, not for screen.

Enamel has rules. Every colour is a cell with a metal wall around it, so the drawing is done in closed shapes from the start, and glitter goes only where a flat colour would die. Get that wrong and the factory decides for you.

Diablos, the chain. Three pins for one team's Cooperstown trip that interlock into one piece and still work on their own: crossed bats over the state, a flaming ball with a face, a cone of melting baseballs. The roster numbers run through all three.

Why it matters to you

Small is where a drawing gets tested.

A pin, a patch, an embroidered cap, a favicon: closed shapes, few colours, nothing to hide behind. A mark drawn to hold up at an inch holds up at any size above it, and the factory, the embroiderer and the screen printer all stop phoning to ask what you meant.

Have something like this? Email me.

Tell me what you're making and when you need it. I reply within a day. What to include

Next project · 3 of 5 A postcard that has to get a stranger to dinner. →