Customize your own prints using our extensive archive of almost 1000 pop culture icons, from Classic Rock to Robots.
Chop Shop Studio is an illustration and design studio by day, but by night, we satisfy our geeky cravings with more whimsical, extracurricular design projects. For the last decade, we have created t-shirts and prints that cull and categorize some of our favorite characters from our childhood and beyond — famous robots, infamous vampires, renown aliens, classic rockers, iconic cars and more. Over the years, we have built an archive of close to 1000 icons!
Everyone has their favorites and we are often asked if we have prints showcasing single icons or could we make personalized sets. It’s never been easy to fulfill these requests, but we’d like to finally do something about it.
We would like to give backers access to this amazing pop culture collection to create your own personalized designs. We are looking to build an online interface where backers will be able to design and submit their creations that we will print and ship directly to your homes.
Wish you had a poster of robots from the 70s? You can do that! Want to celebrate your favorite rock stars from the 60s? No problem! Need a poster of cuddly monsters that don’t scare the children? We’ve put that at your fingertips.
The only limit is your imagination… and working with the archive we have created thus far. Part of this campaign will be about making new sets of icons— but more about that later. For now, here is a list of the themes currently represented in our collection:
In addition to making selections of icons from these themes, backers will also be able to customize the main display message, the bottom signature remarks as well as thebackground shapes and color combinations.
Be sure to watch the video up top to see more about how the whole process will work and how you can make your own custom Pop Icon Print.
The interface for the full experience will not be completed until October of this year, but anyone wishing to get something sooner will be able to choose from many pre-designed options that will be posted to our campaign page and updated regularly. Although we will be providing our own taglines for each of these designs, Kickstarter backers will have the option to customize the text and signature or just stick with our clever defaults.
Check out a few designs we have made so far below. Keep in mind that these are not only early-shipment reward options, but should also serve as an inspiration for what you will be able to do yourself when the interface is made public in the Fall.
There will be many more to come over the next six weeks. We will rotate the four examples above with our favorites over time. Eventually we’ll post them all on a separate page from Kickstarter so that you can browse through them all.
If you don’t wish to wait for the web tool to be completed, you can also pledge for a special series of themed prints… all of which will be completed by the campaign’s end.
Keep an eye out for our next theme: Celebrity Monsters! The designs for all 13 themes will be posted to our website (or wherever) before the end of the campaign…
Options will include:
Each print will be produced with museum quality archival materials. Specific materials to be posted here after we review some samples.
Note: The print dimensions offered will be based on readily available standard frames sizes available from Ikea and other home resources. Adhering to standard sizes will help avoid the high cost of custom framing.
In 2008 we released a design called “The Internets” which featured 29 icons depicting popular internet memes of the time. We enjoyed making that design so much that we introduced the concept to additional genres starting with weRobot a collection of famous robots from science-fiction.
That design went viral, appearing everywhere from BoingBoing to io9 to Uncrate. Naturally, we decided to continue the tradition and replicated it over and over again in the various themes already mentioned above.
The design remains one of our best-sellers and in 2014 we released a poster variation, featuring all the robots to ever appear on the tee since the original. This special edition print will also be made available to backers as a reward option.
Below is a tease of every icon we have in the collection so far. We know these are tiny, but don’t be concerned as they will be displayed clearly in the final interface design.
Not reflected in the image above are the icons related to the special collections dedicated to The Beatles, Monty Python and the Solar System (an additional 185 icons). They’ll definitely be in the database though!
We recently discovered 24 copies of this 2-color screenprint produced in 2010 on extra thick card stock. Only 100 were produced in the series and these are the last of them. We are offering these last copies in our campaign as well.
Where are all the wizards? Don’t see your favorite Jazz artists? Where is the “Rosebud” sled from Citizen Kane? Help us decide what new themes to create next.
If you want to see any of the above collections created, please click this link to participate in our survey online and let us know. There will be a space provided for you to make special requests.
Thanks to the Kickstarter and the whole community for our three previous successes. Those campaigns also helped us land several other design projects for The Planetary Society, Shoot the Moon, Uniphi Space Agency and still more in the works.
Thanks also to Kleptonaut for always providing the music and to Nora Quinn for providing our narration voice.
Thanks also to your for reading this far and considering your support of Pop Icon Prints.
Print projects do not face as much risk as many other kinds of projects do. We have lots of experience with making prints and shipping.
Printer malfunction/replacement is always possible, but even in that worst case scenario — we would repair or replace it. Potentially adding a delay but not endangering the production of rewards.
An October release date for the interface is planned, but is subject to delivery by a separate entity from Chop Shop. There is always a risk that the product is not delivered on time or could be intentionally held back from release due unexpected bugs and usability issues. We want users to enjoy using the tool, not submitting bugs reports. Even in such a scenario, we should still have enough time to get rewards shipping before the holidays are upon us.