On the edge of Fall, the Minnesota State Fair is a pretty serious event. Tucked right in between the 12 miles stretch between Minneapolis and St. Paul, the fairgrounds sit idle all year until its 12 day exhibition. Other states I’ve lived in, it’s not even mentioned or if it is, it’s in some rural town and consists only of livestock, fruits and vegetables. The Minnesota State Fair does cater to that end, but also has a mix of city life.
Not that any of these photos really do that part justice, especially the last:
I can’t believe it’s butter.
I didn’t remember to snap a photo of my fried Walleye on a stick. Also, the largest pumpkin weighed in at 850 pounds. Naturally it’s from Anoka, the self-proclaimed Halloween Capital of the World. I was doing some work in Anoka last Halloween. I can assure you, it’s no joke.
Ten or so years ago, eBay and its listings didn’t have a whole lot of supervision. By nature I seem to gravitate towards areas, virtual or otherwise, that are unsupervised. So it was only a matter of time until I discovered DVD bootlegs for sale from southeast Asia. They were about a quarter of the price, sometimes with extra footage (like the European-cut of The Professional; Léon) and more often than not you could find unreleased titles. Star Wars, Indiana Jones and other big-league series would often wait for the holidays or a new movie to be released before selling the DVDs in America.
Sometimes I would get covers in Korean or Japanese, so I would recreate my own. Just learning Photoshop, I would diligently try to ditto them down to the fonts and studio logos. It was good practice, but I should have explored in a more artistic vein like my post about Minimalist Movie Posters. (I’d probably be better at Illustrator if I had.)
The Criterion Collection thankfully opened things up from the traditional format and created more spellbinding covers that looked like they were pulled out of Chip Kidd’s portfolio. The Criterion discs usually run $30-40, so you are paying for your high-design mainstream product.
However, these bootlegs covers below take a nice stab at a more pleasing aesthetic. Looks like someone is having some fun at least, instead of a typical tiny picture of a wild-eyed Ben Stiller on the spine of a DVD box.
