Halloween Product Concept

Welcome back to another Designerland holiday special post. We’re getting closer to Halloween, so it’s time to roll out another product concept. 

Each Halloween, I patiently await the Disney Store and Theme Park Merchandise to roll out their haunted holiday product lines. And every year, I hope and pray for a Haunted Mansion pumpkin carving kit. Sadly, each year comes and goes and this concept is never added to their product line lists, so I took it upon myself to create one. Well, I created the primary panel display for the packaging and 3 stencils that you can save, print and try for yourselves.

In an ideal world, I would propose more of a collector set with special packaging and higher end tools, but for this concept, I kept it along the lines of the Pumpkin Masters brand carving kits. I know this product could be easily sourced and they already have a working relationship with DCP, so why not the theme parks?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these. There are countless possibilities on how you could use the stencils, from carving to painting, etching or scraping, so let your creativity out! If you do decide to join me on this Halloween carving adventure, send me your photos and I'll post them here. I'm sure your pumpkins won't mind the bright lights! Thanks for stopping by and have a swell week!

Note: These patterns are challenging to actually carve traditionally, I suggest the etching or painting method. Glow in the Dark Paint would be an amazing effect on these!!! If you do want to try to actually carve them, I suggest enlarging the pattern and finding a large pumpkin to use.

Halloween Special Edition: Haunted Mansion

Welcome back to Designerland. I hope you all had a swell weekend. This week's post was supposed to be a new typography case study, but as I'm not through with all my research and font-finding, I will instead present the Haunted Mansion Halloween Costumes!

Like many of you, I was part of the boxed costume generation. I remember going to the store and seeing the shelves lined with boxes of various monsters, cartoon characters and movie stars peering at me through their cellophane die-cut windows. Picking the right costume was important because you wanted to make sure no other kid showed up to school in the same one. I can remember that tense moment when the teacher told us to go put on our costumes. We'd all run to the closet, each of us grabbing up our boxed costumes, the cellophane crackling as we opened our boxes, and we would each scan the room to see if we matched with anyone else. Luckily, I was always the odd kid out. While most kids wanted G. I. Joe or Hulk Hogan, I was Yoda or some obscure glowing skeleton creature.

The most popular vinyl box costume producer was Ben Cooper, followed closely by Collegeville. I was always drawn to Ben Cooper’s line of costumes due to the quality of design and selection of characters. Since the plastic masks and vinyl “aprons” were the Halloween uniforms for so many of us, I wanted to pay homage to Ben Cooper by retheming some of his classic costume box designs to align with Designerland & Disney Theme Park merchandise. I recreated the mask designs, using existing Disney art and are FPO.

Well that about does it for this week’s post. We'll be honoring the Halloween season all month long here at Designerland, so stay tuned for more frighteningly fun posts. As for the next Case Study, that'll have to wait until next month. As always, thanks for stopping by and see you all next week.

Hollywood Tower Birthday

In honor of the original Twilight Zone Tower of Terror's birthday, I've made this small gift for all my readers. This was actually an assignment in one of my intro to design classes back in college: the dreaded album cover redesign. Rather than simply recreating an existing album, I decided to design something new based on one of my favorite attractions within the Disney Parks. While the Tower of Terror has an existing soundtrack that plays within the lobby of the hotel, I looked deeper into the attraction’s storyline.

Two of my favorite things are Halloween and Disney, so when Imagineers combine these two into one amazing attraction, the result is pure bliss for a dork like me. The one thing I find odd is that within the hotel, there aren’t many references to the specific day when lightning struck the elevator shaft, Halloween Night. I did a bit of armchair imagineering and come up with a small decorative overlay for the inside lobby for the Halloween season: faded, torn crepe paper streamers, orange and black glittered party hats covered in layers of dust, rotted pumpkins, deflated balloons, confetti, sequined black masks and so on. The general idea is that since it was Halloween night, the Tip Top Club would have hosted a masquerade party. So what kind of music would they have played at Halloween within the Hotel? Out of that one question came The Hollywood Tower Hotel presents Haunted Halloween Hits.

Why post this now rather than save it for the Halloween season? My answer is simply this: there are only 100 days left until my favorite Holiday, and it's better to be prepared than sorry!!!! Be sure to click on the picture!