I want to be Caine when I grow up.

How ’bout we celebrate the opening of the baseball season with a giveaway?! Clinker Jared Fanning has generously offered up his latest creation as a prize. Jared’s Baseball Season Tracker is a marvel of design, simplicity, and whimsy. I can’t think of a cooler way to fanatically follow your team, be it a winning or loosing one, and crescendo with a treasured souvenir. Jared is one of those designers whose arrow shoot true. Know what I mean? Every decision is uncluttered. When I try to do uncluttered, it often feels boring to me. But Jared manages to do uncluttered with whimsy, and if know anything about Brandiose, we’ve got a soft spot for whimsy.

Check out all of Jared’s great work at his site here.

Lets take a closer look at this Baseball Tracker. Here is the poster as you recieve it, unmarked by the season’s adventures.

Here’s a sample of what it looks like all marked up. Pretty great.

Jared’s done a great job of focusing the statistics on a few key figures. The red bars jutting each way according to wins or loses is a great whole season visualization.

You can even track how many games you’ve been to, how many hot dogs consumed, and of course how many beers, I mean beverages, consumed.

HOW TO ENTER TO WIN
Email us a photo of you at a baseball game, it could be a photo of you and your Pops at a game in the 70’s in full afro, it could be you and your buddies at a game last year, it could you at a ballgame in Clink gear. High School, MLB, MiLB, or tee ball we don’t descriminate. Jared, Jason, and myself will pick our favorite, the funnier, weirder, cooler, cleverer, goofier, dumber, the better. If your photo matches those descriptions best then you’ll get a Baseball Tracker poster and we’ll throw in some Clink stuff as well.

Email your photos to…

baseballtrackercontest@theclinkroom.com

We’ll stop taking entries on Sunday, April 15th. We’ll announce the winner Tuesday April 17th. If you don’t win this contest, or don’t want to wait to see if you won, head on over to Jared’s site to grab yours here. Thanks Jared for this cool idea and your great design!

Mudhens’/Tigers’ Maze from last fall. Awesome. Via Farmer Charleys.

Black Thought wearing the Strictly Fitteds’ hat logo we designed. Via Strictly Fitteds. One of the best artists alive, awesome.

Me excited to use the infamous Kid’s Door at the Reading Phillies new team store in person. Via Reading Phillies. Freakin’ kid’s door!!! Are you kidding? Three exclamation points awesome!!!

Slay’s photo of a cute girl wearing his Walbats piece. (Only 4 left!) Girls in Clink, awesome.

More 9 to the Nines sketches. Kid’s decked out like a pro team, awesome.

Kick this weekend’s ass Clinkers!

Man, another legend has left this World. Moebius is one of the great artists the comic book form has ever produced. The French artist’s work overflows with magic and beauty. When I look at Moebius work, I always feel transported to Worlds so rich with life and culture that it’s difficult for me to believe that they don’t exist or haven’t existed at some point.

Here is Moebius’ Official page.

Here is a great Moebius tumblr with tributes, inspiration, etc. (NSFW)

This one of those videos that I liked just as a fun time-waster but then I became obsessed with how they did it and how I would do it if I was doing it.

Created by Jimmy Diebold

The World lost a legend last week. Ralph McQuarrie is the artist that created the Star Wars universe as we know it. I mean he designed Darth Vader, the greatest looking villain of all-time. And I will fight you if you disagree. Thank you for your work Ralph!

Go here to see a slide show of some of his work…

I was reading The New Yorker this past weekend and ran across an amazing illustration of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse accompaning the article “The Big Reveal” By Adam Gopnik . I went a searchin’ for more work by the illustrator, Ronald Kurniawan, and was totally blown away. His sense of color and whimsy is so inspiring. Go to his site and be inspired…

This is a strange thing to say, but Elmo has become a huge part of my life since my son’s arrival. He can’t get enough of the furry monster. And frankly he’s awesome. Happy, positive, enthusiastic. A couple nights ago the wife and I watch the documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey“. I haven’t felt this inspired in a longtime.

Kevin Clash is the man behind Elmo and much of Sesame Street. We see him growing up with a passion for puppeteering and telling stories, working in public access and for Captain Kangaroo. Eventually landing his first gig with Jim Henson. Mr. Henson one of my top 5 heros so it was an exciting moment in Kevin’s story. I love movies that inspire me to start making things and this movie had me laying in bed thinking of all the things I want to get started on for Clink and Brandiose. Check out the trailer here…

“Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey” is streaming on Netfix Instant Watch. Watch it this instant!

Steal from the masters. Here’s a master.

Via Devour.

Check this cool little feature on CBS Sunday Morning about Nike’s uniform design and the Oregon Ducks. Uni-Watch’s Paul Lukas weighs in with his expertise as well. Watch it here.