2021 Legacy Band; The Concept...
I've always been somewhat resistant to heavily 'brand focus' designs. The arrogance is well earned by Gucci, to be able to tout this design approach.
I have always put design first and how we can achieve the best results with the aesthetic components of the ring. By this I mean, you will rarely see blatant branding slapped across a ring.
Whether its that I feel we don't yet deserve this spot light or that I have just preferred other imagery... either way, Crooked Howlet Designs is rarely the focal point in our rings.
*In strolls the Legacy Band...
Now, let me introduce, this new design.
The concept was to have a plain band style (without a signet face), that maps our journey - like cave etchings.
Throughout the design, we have small engravings that represent milestones within our brand life.
However, you'll notice that these milestones, or lets call them 'key design motifs', represent milestones of any lifecycle. Originally designed as a piece to showcase CHD's journey, we pivoted as we understood the relationship of everyones individual trot. From Good and Bad luck, through to those things most important in your life. This is the 2021 Legacy Band, that you can all see yourself in.
Let me take you through these (not in chronological order)...
1. The Eagle; it was whilst watching the Hori Smoku documentary on traditional tattoos and a deep dive into this style that originally gave me the idea for having monthly exclusives. I loved the approach for these one off, exclusive tattoos that generally have a tie to a certain life stage for these sailors. I felt that we couldn't achieve this by having this style engraved into designs and available all year around. They needed to be anchored to a certain milestone, or period. So we gave it the 'Month' to be sold within. The eagle is a traditional and very noticeable tattoo style from the era.
2. The Horseshoes; this represents the good and bad luck that we've had throughout our journey.
The bad luck specifically, was the situation we had in 2018, where our website was hacked and I lost 30k. As a young business, this was hard to cop. There were many sleepless nights and long unpaid days. But it didn't flatten us, so out the ass end of it, I was stoked to see how resilient the business is.
The 'good luck' comes in many forms. Business is a unique blend of luck and hard work. You create the opportunity and capability, through hard work and the chance of good luck finding you, becomes the positive advantage of the numbers game. However, for success - you need that little swig of good luck.
I put CHD's 'good luck' down to the business mentorship I had from my father. No hard work could earn that and it can feel undeserved at times. In other walks of life, hard work will play a part of finding that mentorship.
3. The Sinking Ship and Homeward Bound; the move a few years ago to set up in the UK, make this our base and ship out of both Aus and the UK. Long story short, we ended up deciding to come home to Aus and go hammer and tong here. This is when we moved into our big new studio where we are today and things really hit a new stride. This was our period of true scale...
I have found this to be a common journey for many people. In a recent podcast with Year 13 founder, we discuss just this. Both the clarity of returning home after an eye opening trip, paired with the stark reality of life on the home front.
4. The Skull Headed Cat; represents one of the funner collaborations I've done with a long time friend, 'Jake Voroshine'; Crooked Howlet Sucks campaign.
5. The 13th Dice & 8 Ball; obviously associated to the Friday the 13th One Day Exclusive Releases, which first launched in 2018. The 8 Ball has its roots in the reference to chance. However, together we want to put a further emphasis on chance being subject to rolling the dice and allowing the opportunity for chance to have an affect in your life. As it has ours.
6. The Dead Fish; is actually tied to both the Design Comp and our beginnings in design - as the first ever ring that we ever did (as some of you may remember), was the Sailors Grave design (with this dead fish). Then it was only fitting that the winner of the first ever design comp was the Prosperity, koi fish design.
7. One of my favourite motifs, is the Ouroboros Serpent; which made its way into the ranks with the Ouroboros Signets and Pendants.
8. The Hourglass; is more of a personal law that rises my corpse out of bed at 4:15am every morning. Both a fear and a discomfort of the day ticking by - something that drives me each day to get after it.
If not already seen through motifs such as Memento Mori, its a worth message to take on - the inevitability of death shouldn't be looming darkness, but a motivator, to get up and get after it.
9. The Irish Clover; is a personal one and also associated to the St Paddy's Day Release, which was the first of our condensed 'One Day Exclusives'. We had only ever done the Monthly Exclusives, and on St Paddy's Day 2019, we release The Ken, for 24 Hours Only. The first of the ODEs.