The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company

Ever consider where Wonder Woman got her invisible plane or Bruce Wayne, his manor? Chances are, like all savvy caped crusaders, they found them at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company.





What exactly is the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.?
The brainchild of literary celeb Dave Eggers, the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. is a crime-fighting supply retailer whose sales support 826NYC, a non profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 through 18 with workshops in creative and expository writing.

With both a brick and mortar store as well as an e-commerce online site, they sell actual products ranging from capes and costumes to secret identity kits and maps exposing good and evil.





The tongue-in-cheek products are a visual treat (and yes, for sale). Their beautifully packaged generic-looking items, their Aardvark Bothers canned goods and the products packaged under the name Bugayanko laboratories, are hard to resist. Here's just a few for you:












And products under the clever name of Masque, like those below.

Mt. Fortress tights...

and of course, something to keep them from running:


They also sell these wonderful Superhero wall clocks designed by Sam Potts, Marcel Dzama, Chip Kidd, Al Baik and Rebecca Gimenez:




In addition to the tangible wares, they sell hilarious faux products at hilariously outrageous prices. The invisible plane runs $4 million and the mansion, $9 million.

A few more:


A few images of the store interior:




Their website and the actual store are sprinkled with hilarious signage and witty ads:





and you can even get a formal certificate:


all photos courtesy of The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

E-mail: supplier@superherosupplies.com.
Telephone: (718) 499-9884.

Street Address: 372 5th Ave. Brooklyn, NY. 11215.

If you can't visit the Brooklyn store in person, at least take a look at the website.

Here's Dave Eggers speaking about it:

 



What is 826NYC? 826NYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around our belief that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. With this in mind we provide drop-in tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. All of our free programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student's power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice. Please visit www.826nyc.org for more information.

A Better Look At Those 100 YOOX Covers

To celebrate the 8th anniversary of the upscale online designer fashion and home boutique, YOOX.COM, they have compiled their last 100 covers and are selling them as limited edition prints. Like a magazine, the site has a new 'cover' on its homepage each month created by YOOX Creative Director, Alberto Biagetti and designer Alessandro Guerriero.

Each image features a photographic and illustrated composite of beauty and fashion exemplified with a model clad in futuristic objects and imagery (many of them Memphis-style). Produced as prints on glossy paper, YOOX is selling 100 signed and numbered editions of each, measuring 27.3" x 19.5"



As much as I like YOOX, they made the navigation to view the covers very difficult. It's not easy to view them all (you have to continually return to the gallery to choose the next) or to get a good look at the prints and see the illustrative quality of some of them, as in the detail shown below:



That said, I've compiled many of the covers and composed them alongside some close-ups so you can get a good look at some of the more interesting details and images. And all without clicking back and forth.

This is a long ass post, you'd better be comfy.

Some covers and close-ups, in no particular order (click to enlarge):








































Some Full Covers- the following images do NOT enlarge:













Alberto Biagetti, creative director of YOOX.COM, and Alessandro Guerriero, world-renowned designer, tells the project’s story (interview courtesy of the The NewYooxer.com):


What was the original idea behind the covers?

AB: All of us have a hidden desire to see the imaginary, and the YOOXCOVERS are the realization of this desire. We wanted to dress the body with imagination.

AG: More than idea, we started out with a vision. We looked at clothing as a complex design, like architecture housing the body. From there we imagined the rest… clothing became virtual and, as a consequence, without time or space.

The covers combine fashion, design, real space and the virtual world. What is your creative and working process when making these covers? What gives you the inspiration to re-create them every month?

AB: Each month we create an imaginary space and design a surreal landscape for the body. The body may end up wearing the city, art, landscape, imagination, light…

AG: We start out with an abstract idea that is then translated into a drawing using the body as the only criteria in terms of form, and finally a virtual model is made.

100 covers in 8 years is a great achievement: what do the first and last covers have in common? How has the concept evolved?

AB: Each image tests the limits of the idea of the virtual outfit. A designer imagines a red dress as fire or designs flames around it; we create a dress of fire. Each cover, from the first to the last, is the realization of the impossible. The idea evolves with the mind: it adapts and changes with the times, our experience and the world’s.

AG: The common denominator is that there is never static thinking but a constant evolution of thought in motion and that’s why the image evolves as well…

What’s the message of your images?

AB: The covers embody contemporary man. For better and/or for worse, man is detached from reality, between the body and the world there’s technology, and technology sets specific limits and offers infinite spaces. One of these spaces is designated to intellectual creativity.

AG: These images have a strong and powerful aesthetic impact, and yet each cover captures a transient idea hanging by a thread. As far as content is concerned, the only constant factor is its transformation and, as a consequence, the continual transformation of the cover.

All 100 (click to enlarge):







Buy the limited edition prints of the covers here.