Devilish Fads, part 1 of 2
The other day I was driving on the freeway. An SUV pulled in front of me, a nice one too. Except for one thing…it had a GIGANTIC tazmanian devil sticker on the back of it! Now, first of all, I am not a sticker-on-the-car person. I don’t have any fish (christian or otherwise), no NOTW, no Know Jesus, Know Peace etc., no Obama 08, no McCain/Palin, no nothing! Stickers are for putting on your skateboard. Or for placing in your sticker notebook, along with baseball cards.
Second of all, I am not (and never have been) a fan of the tasmanian devil. Not because of the devil connotation, but because of the fact that he’s a…dork. Seriously, anybody who runs around with their tongue hanging out and slobbering all over people is a dork. He can’t speak any coherent language and is too busy spinning around messing things up to make any friends. He’s a dork. That is all besides point. The real problem with Taz? He’s another fad. A fad from 1998 to be exact.
Remember when people were wearing T-shirts with Taz on them? Or keychains shaped like Taz? Remember cups and glasses and pajamas and…slogans like: “muablahefgetlay!” (which is tazmanian devil for buy my gear, dawg!) Now 11 years later, some guy in a blacked out (or murdered out as some call it) SUV has the audacity to put a Taz sticker on his rig?! Point being this, what fad(s) are you chasing?
I have a theory about christian merchandising companies: they are always a fad/trend behind. That’s why no one in their right mind would buy a “fear not” (no fear) t-shirt. Or “A bread Crumb and Fish” (abercrombie and fitch). Or “His Pain, Your Gain“, the Lord’s Gym. All of those ideas were behind the times. They were made in response to, at the time, current or fading trends. As a Christian and a designer, I believe that we should be creating the trends. Never copying or imitating them. Why? I will get to that in the next post. Stay tuned…
