One of Our Fav Graphic Designers Featured in Atlanta Magazine!

The Brand Man: Meet Atlanta restaurateurs’ best-kept secret

 

1016_alvin02_oneuseonly-768x846 Pic. Credit CAROLINE C. KILGORE

Mr. Alvin Diec (34) co-owner of Office of Brothers is one of our favorite designers! He and his six person team create some of the most graphically inspired branding for his impressive list of restaurants & restaurant groups that are located primarily in the Atlanta area.

He's a true believer in the power and efficacy of match advertising and makes a point to include an advertising match design in every one of his restaurant or non restaurant corporate branding presentation! The compelling match designs that he and his team create (and that we produce) become instant collectibles! Restaurants and businesses use their matches as a brand extension and as a "Functional Business Card".

Here are some pics of  match books and match boxes that we've produced for Alvin's restaurant clients.

Bar Margot BXQ3 USA Made Match Box
Bar Margot BXQ3 USA Made Match Box
State Of Grace Match Box Made in the USA
State Of Grace Match Box Made in the USA
Cooks & Soldiers Match Book
Cooks & Soldiers Match Book
En Fuego Match Box Made in the USA
En Fuego Match Box Made in the USA

 

To design and order your business' own collectible matches GoTo TheMatchGroup


The New Yorker Magazine Instagram's Ephemera & Popularity Of Matchbooks!

The New Yorker Article Re. The Popularity of Instagramming Ephemera -Featuring Advertising Matches!
MARCH 24, 2015

Instagram’s Endangered Ephemera

@matchbookdiaries Instagram Page
@matchbookdiaries Instagram Page

www.instagram.com/matchbookdiaries

This terrific article references all stripes of ephemera that collectors post to Instagram and singles out the popularity of picturess of matches that are featured by users with thousand's of followers on the site.

An Instagrammer, Bill Rose (@junktype) was quoted: “Most of the objects in my feed are no bigger than a couple of inches wide. They are often so small that my phone has trouble focussing given the close range of my subject.
Confirming Bill Rose's point, another popular Instagrammer, Charles Clarke (@matchbookdiaries) [with almost 13,000 followers] who's page exclusively concentrates on pictures of matches who shoots his matchbooks against a white background was quoted: “I use the white background because it looks clean, and because you can scroll my profile page and it doesn’t look like there are any dividers between the photos. It looks like a big poster.”

All lot of graphic designers refer to Instagram as a means of being plugged into the latest trends in design and to provide inspiration.

The article's author, ALEXANDRA LANGE reached out to Ara Devejian (@LetterGetter), a creative director and by way of his background she quoted him stating: “[he] started his [Instagram account] when he moved to Los Angeles’s superlatively-signed Theatre District. Every day, I try to take a new route to work or wherever, especially going way out my way to discover new places on my bike or in the car, and in turn LetterGetter is the happy byproduct of that curiosity.” At first Devejian wanted to document typographic nightmares—the illegible, the mishandled—but, as with most Instagram accounts, things swung over to the positive. The platform’s users have such a strong preference for things that are pretty (however you define it) that it’s difficult to swim against the tide of posting “bests” rather than “worsts.” “@LetterGetter helps inform some of the typographic projects I work on,” Devejian said, “like the title card I designed for Gymkhana 7. The style of the photos is intentionally flat or sparse in order to see the letterforms as they were conceived.” He goes on to say: “People have yelled at me—thinking I’m about to steal or break something—and then afterwards, realizing that I’m only taking pictures and admiring their car or whatever, tell me their life story,” Devejian says. “I’ve become painfully accustomed to just how fleeting signage is. It’s made me wonder whether I should become some sort of advocate for preservation, in attempt to postpone their inevitable disappearance.”

To order your branded matches go to GetMatches.com  Check out TheMatchGroup's Instagram Page

Instagram


Dallas Observer Article re. The Appeal of Collecting Advertising Matches and How They Preserve Life's Memories and Experiences

I MISS YOU, RESTAURANT MATCHBOOKS

The restaurant Private Social's match box
The restaurant Private Social's match box

An article written four years ago in the Dallas Observer featuring the lasting appeal of collecting advertising matches and how they uniquely preserve a person's memories and life experiences that other forms of restaurant advertising such as business cards are incapable of connecting on such an intimate level. When a customer is offered advertising matches by a restaurant or bar, they are not only used as a keepsake but they also serve as functional business cards for infinite uses around their homes and backyards!

http://www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/i-miss-you-restaurant-matchbooks-7037195

Here are some quotes from the article  written

"Some of the matchbook memories are more visceral than others. A blue box marks a memorable dinner I had with my mom at Zatinya in D.C. A black one with thin white lettering marks a birthday party where all my friends gathered to mark my third decade of not dying. I like those matches for far more than candle-lighting. Digging through the bowl is like paging through a photo album filled with my life's great meals.

... the business cards that have replaced [restaurants'] boxes don't have the same appeal. I'll grab one when I walk into a restaurant, but then it just sits in my wallet until the corners round and I dump them out on my dresser like playing cards. The restaurant Rolodex doesn't have nearly the romance as my bowl of matches. I need that strike of sulfur to ignite my memories.

 

 

TO ORDER YOUR OWN LOGO'D MATCHES CHECK OUT TheMatchGroup. We offer design services and will produce the highest quality US Made matches that fit every budget!


TheMatchGroup Announces Their New Website GetMatches.com

TheMatchGroup's updated Lit Match Logo
TheMatchGroup's updated Lit Match Logo

 

Please take the time to visit www.GetMatches.com and check out our interactive tools to upload your logo and create your own match book and match box art layout designs!

TheMatchGroup was founded to provide the most efficient & responsive customer service, while offering the LOWEST Factory-Direct Prices and the Quickest Delivery Time in the industry. We produce the highest quality matches and promotional tabletop paper products at low factory direct costs. We offer the fastest order turnaround on the most popular domestically produced match books and boxes – from “proof to product” in a blazing 15 days!

With over 30 years in the industry, company founder Joe Danon's passion and devotion to the historic importance, whimsy and efficacy of match advertising is unrivaled. His devoted and loyal clientele have long benefited from his “Love of Light,” graphic design expertise and unparalleled product knowledge.

 


Match Book Advertising & Free Speech: Period of the Late '60's Up to the Modern Day and Their Use During The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Match Book Advertising and Free Speech

Student Hippies facing off against the National Guard
Student Hippies facing off against the National Guard

Just like any printed matter, match book advertising qualifies as a form of free speech in America. Therefore, making the circumstances under which the wording of a matchbook advertisement might be deemed to be an element of a crime very narrow under the First Amendment.

Nevertheless, there have been cases where matchbook advertising/propaganda has been known to test the limits of the law. For example, during the politically charged antiwar era of the late 1960's/early '70's matchbooks printed with the message "EOW" were distributed at Bloomfield State College in West Virginia. These letters stood as the acronym for "End of Week". The secret message behind these letters was passed along by the students encouraging them to burn the campus if the demands of certain student groups were not met by the end of the week.[1]

During this tumultuous period in our country's history; when our country was experiencing rampant (and deadly) college student protests against the Vietnam War and a series of riots fueled by rage in response to the news of the assassination of M.L.K. that resulted in the destruction of many major cities, match advertising was also used by "The Man" as a means to "counter" the "counterculture". "The Man" in this case was a Dallas Police Officer who decided to design and distribute his own matchbooks as propaganda to advertise his support for his fellow patrolmen with apparent success. So as the story goes, during the late '60's and early '70's members of the angry Hippie counterculture referred to Law Enforcement Officers as "Pigs." This Dallas Policeman, decided to take the sting out of the counterculture's disrespectful use of the word "Pig" by acknowledging it and to repurpose it in his own personal public relations campaign by distributing matchbooks along his beat that he had printed with the message "Leonard Edge: Pig and Proud!".[2]

The use of match book advertising by Law Enforcement didn't end after the '70's. Since then, local Police Departments and the FBI have used printed advertising matches as a method to aid in the capture of wanted fugitives, to advertise local D.A.R.E. anti-drug programs, as well as local "Cop Shot" Tips Hotline reward programs. Furthermore, back in 1995 -6 years PRIOR to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which lead to our engagement in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA and the local authorities in Pakistan had successfully distributed wanted posters along and MATCHBOOKS as a medium for advertising a $2 Million reward for the capture of wanted international terrorists such as Mir Amal Kansi who was wanted in the brutal attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 in which two people were killed and three other people were permanently injured.[3]

To order your business' own groovy advertising matches check out TheMatchGroup
Man or call a member of our very hip and cool sales staff at 800.605.7331. who would love to turn your business' clients on to the experience of your custom branded match advertising!
[1] James v. West Virginia Bd. Of Regents, 322 F.Supp. 217 (S.D. W.Va., 1971), aff'd 448 F.2d 785 (4th Cir. 1971).

[2]  Minor v. State, 469 S.W.2d 579 (Tex. Crim. App. 1971); Minor v. State, 476 S.W.2d 694 (Tex. Crim. App. 1972).

[3] CONG.REC.H10167 (daily ed.Oct.8,1998)(remarks of Rep. Gilman);see also United States Department of State, Daily Press Briefing (October 2,1995) GoTohttp://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/briefing/daily_briefings/1995/9510/951002db.html> (visited 10 August 1999).[End page 84]