Most agencies make T-shirts. American Haiku made a sword. The Brooklyn-based creative company has launched “Elevated Essentials for the Modern Haijin,” a six-piece back-to-school collection that extends the strange, highly designed world introduced by its retro-digital website collaboration with Studio Temp.
The line includes a $100 T-shirt, $50 notebook, $400 flight jacket and badge set, $50 room odorizer, $20 sticker set and, because apparently office swag needed an escalation, a $1,000 hand-forged katana available only by application.
A “haijin” is someone who writes haiku, and American Haiku has built the collection around the idea of equipment for creative discipline rather than traditional agency merchandise.
“Every September has its rituals,” says American Haiku Creative Director Ben Muckensturm. “New shoes. New pens. Correct equipment as foundation of correct practice. The haijin’s mind should resemble the schoolchild’s pencil. Sharpened. Ready.”
That philosophy carries through the entire presentation.
The product copy, packaging and photography use the bilingual Japanese-and-Latin typographic system established on the agency’s website, treating each object less like branded swag and more like an artifact from an imagined creative order.
The flight jacket is described as the “second skin of the modern haijin.” The notebook becomes a “record of scars and fireworks within the mind.” Even the room spray is framed as part of a disciplined creative practice.
Then there is the katana.
American Haiku describes it as hand-forged, custom-engraved, folded steel and clay-tempered, but unlike the rest of the collection, it cannot simply be purchased. Prospective owners have to apply for one and make the case for why they deserve it.
The humor is deadpan, but the underlying idea is serious. Take a look at the goods below:
American Haiku worked with Studio Temp on the product designs, with photography by Cody Lidtke. The collection also continues the agency’s broader world-building approach.
Its website, created with Studio Temp, reads less like a conventional agency portfolio and more like a portal inspired by late-night movies, 16-bit games, and early computer operating systems. The merch line takes that aesthetic out of the browser and turns it into physical objects.
That feels consistent with an agency whose recent work includes campaigns for New Balance, Mozilla and Starbucks, and whose name itself comes from a remark by filmmaker Errol Morris about the art of advertising.
There is also a give-back component: for every complete collection purchased, American Haiku says it will donate another to a New York City middle-school student.
REELated:
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Presumably without the katana.
The collection launched Sept. 16.
For an industry that has produced no shortage of tote bags, hoodies, and logo mugs, American Haiku has at least solved one problem:
Nobody will mistake this for standard agency swag.
