Monday, September 26, 2016

Blue.




Low Fidelity.

Blue was started in 1992 by Jason Lee, Chris Pastras, and Kareem Campbell. All three had been riding for Blind or World Industries and wanted to do something different that was more grown up than the edgy material Steve Rocco was selling. Blue was the precursor to Stereo, with some of the graphics being inspired by jazz culture. The company didn't last long before Chris and Jason started Stereo with Deluxe in 1993 and Kareem went back to World Industries.

This is going to be four day week of Vert Is Dead. I'm using some vacation time on Wednesday. I'll probably be taking a few more mid-week days off in the next couple months because I need a break from work.

The next two features I'll be putting together will be on Welcome To Hell and Mouse, since both are 20 years old now.

Dune & Kareem: Transworld - July 1992 Volume 10 Number 7

Life after skateboarding: Transworld - August 1992 Volume 10 Number 8

4 comments:

natenola said...

Blue was based out of Vision, i think this was the same time Ed started Toy Machine through Vision, kinda how they were trying to stay relevant. I guess everyone soon realized Dorfman sucked and bailed. Never really understood how Blue morfed to Stereo but recently ive realized Blue may have come from Blue Note record and had some of the smae Jazz influence as Stereo.

Justin said...

Yup, Blue was backed by Vision. I just didn't feel like mentioning that this time around.

The company was probably a learning experience as much as anything for Dune and Jason. They were both young and this would have been the first time they were undertaking any sort of professional endeavor where they were in charge. If I remember, a couple of the Blue graphics were a little similar to what would happen with Stereo. The last few ads before it ended touched more on the jazz references. However, they are too pixelated to really be worth scanning - video grabs and bitmap art.

TV was Vision, Television was Zero Two, and Toy Machine 1.0 was Vision before Ed switched to Foundation/Tum Yeto. TV was going on at the same time as Blue.

Anonymous said...

I would like to see some Shine ads.

Justin said...

Bill - Been there, done that:

http://vertisdead.blogspot.com/2015/05/kevin-staab-4.html