Big Ricky's

It all started with a mistake

in the factory that led to Rick calling up one of our Creative Directors at Sapient Razorfish to see if we wanted to help him create a new product.

Rick is the owner of America’s Blanket Company, where he makes outrageously soft blankets. One day, one of his machines took a tumble and spilled oil all over the shop floor, in a fit Rick grabbed scraps from one of his blankets and tried to at least control the mess. To his surprise the cloth he’d grabbed was actually absorbing the grease!

In comes Sapient Razorfish, and a friendly connection. Jared Kelleher asked a team to assemble and turn this accident into a product. Research and strolling through hardware stores helped us decide that this would be best introduced through the automotive market.

With car guys and girls in mind, we set out to have a product that both does the job, and stands out from the competition. The fire engine red seemed like an obvious choice as most cloths were either blue or beige. The red also lended itself to showcasing the grease absorbing power.

Next came the absurd name, it took a lot of one sided laughing conference calls with Rick to convince him to put his name on the product. Big Ricky’s was born and with it, more absurd behaviors.

Aside from the commercial, I needed the website to feel professional, sleek but still playful and colloquial. The logo is meant to feel like a stamp and be as smooth as the oil it picks up. I hand rendered and created a custom typeface to suite the newness of the product and the brand. With that I chose a more rounded and clean typeface, Gotham, to complement the smooth strokes.

Making a commercial

We wanted to make it as weird as possible. With a name like Big Ricky’s it was only natural that the commercial have the same sense of humor.

Creative Direction by Kit Casey & Jared Kelleher

Copy writing by Ilan Frankel

Art Direction by Meredith Mendosa

Production by Nate Delong

Film editing By Kenneth Kelly

Designing a package

I had never made a ready for production product. So I learned by doing. A lot of folding and gluing later we came up with a pretty solid single glue strip folded package design that was both economical and eco-friendly. Each package had to house 3 cloths and the cloths had to also be secured to the package in some way. My solution was to add a hook similar to what you find on socks to fasten the cloths.

Expanding the Brand

Down the line, Rick, asked us to think of products that he could build the brand with. Liquid car wax seemed like the obvious choice since the cloth itself was ideal for buffing without fear of scratching.