James Gibbs is a freelance illustrator & designer based in Bristol, UK. According to his site, he draws by day & sleeps by night.
"The individual sections illustrate common life aspirations, or 'bucket-list items' for people to tick off—such as a helicopter ride or going on safari."
The Half and Half is a design/printmaking studio located in Columbia, SC. Their team consists of Sara Thomas, Nick Wilson, and Thomas Jennings.
Not only did they design a poster for the project, they're the team of artists who will silkscreen each poster, bringing all the little details to life with care.
The Poster Project is a celebration of the maker spirit. We invited illustrators and designers from around the world to contribute, giving each an inspiring line and simple color palette. They worked to refine their ideas and bring beautiful posters to life.
100% of the proceeds are going to the visual and silkscreen artists. There’s only 50 of each limited edition poster—once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.
We hope you like them! Check out the Poster Project »
—The Baron Fig Team
As soon as Confidants began shipping we noticed people sharing their page-one box. They were filled with all sorts of creations, including hand-drawn typography, quotes, doodles, and full-blown illustrations. It's exciting to see a simple page being used in so many different ways.
Now we're asking you: What's in your box?
We're going to be on the lookout for community favorites and will re-share them!
—The Baron Fig Team
We launched Baron Fig as a Kickstarter campaign last fall. Due to the inherent nature of their platform, everyone can view the number of backers, funding, and individual pledges a project has. These numbers help create trust with the community by having the details displayed at all times for everyone to see.
After successfully completing our 30-day campaign we launched our full webstore and made the books available to everyone. We quickly realized there was a lack of dynamic information that supplied the community with true people-statistics like those available during our Kickstarter. Without community data it's harder for potential customers to know if a product is viable.
We took a careful look at all the statistics we had available and released the ones that represent the people involved in the Baron Fig community. You can find all of our public information on our Stats page. This includes:
You can see it in action on the Stats page >
—The Baron Fig Team
[If you haven't already read our launch post, you can check it out here.]
When we started Baron Fig nearly a year ago we had no idea what it would become, but we knew there were two very important passions that we wanted to communicate to the world:
1. Making things is a way of life. We can't imagine living an existence in which we don't get to create. Bringing ideas to fruition, no matter the form, is a true joy—and something we will celebrate at every turn. It's not about what you do in the books, but what you do beyond them.
2. Enabling creators is our mission. Our full mission statement is, "To champion thinkers in their journey to create and inspire the world." The products we make are designed by those who use them—by those who take part in the same creative process as you.
Thank you for all the support over the past year. It's made all the difference.
—The Baron Fig Team
Here are some things you should know:
Shipping is free. One of our primary goals since starting Baron Fig has been figuring out how to bring you a high quality book at a great price. With a free shipping option—even for one book—we've added another layer of accessibility in getting the Confidant right to your front door.
The Confidant will evolve. This is a big one! None of our notebook designs are set in stone. We're always listening to what you have to say and improving your experience. We've made the Confidant as simple as possible, this way we have a clean slate to apply your feedback for the next version.
We're starting with the US. Little by little, we'll get to everyone. Our small studio would be biting off more than we could chew if we launched internationally. We're working on getting Baron Fig books to everyone, one step at a time.
The past year has been incredible—big thanks to everyone and their continued support. You all rock.
—The Baron Fig Team
SHOP BOOKS
Notebooks mean a lot to us here at Baron Fig. They’re the lifeblood of creative work, the repositories of ideas, sketches, notes—all of it. Naming our first book was a daunting task. We could’ve gone with Baron Fig Hardcover Gray and taken the easy route, but that’s no fun.
The names of our books should have meaning, like everything else we try to produce. We want the name to be a small nod towards the way the books are used.
So—we’d like to formally introduce you to the Confidant, the book you’ve been seeing over the past few months. They go on sale in our webstore on March 4 (next Tuesday).
We hope you like them.
—The Baron Fig Team
Over the past year we’ve worked to bring Baron Fig books to life—and next month they'll be available to everyone. This past week our Kickstarter-backed books have been arriving at doorsteps worldwide, and the response has been incredible. It’s been a rewarding experience to create these books from scratch.
Getting to this point has been a journey, to say the least. We spent months poring over every detail of our first product and got feedback from thinkers worldwide. They’ve shared their thoughts with us and continue to do so every day.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be working to bring Baron Fig books to everyone through our webstore. We look forward to sharing with everyone what we’ve been working on, and we’re excited to continue our mission: To champion thinkers in their journey to create and inspire the world.
Friends, family, and thinkers everywhere—thank you for your support. We couldn’t have done it without you.
—Joey & Adam
To our amazing backers, thank you for all the support over the past few months. You’ve shown your enthusiasm by emailing, tweeting, and even visiting us. We love you for it. (Same goes for all of the non-backers who’ve shown the love since our Kickstarter campaign ended!)
Now it’s time to get you your books: they’re going out over the next few days. Keep an eye on your mailboxes! All domestic shipments should be received by the middle of February; international ship times vary by country.
We hope you like what we’ve made, and we look forward to your feedback as we work towards making the books even better.
—The Baron Fig Team
Here’s what going on in this magical month of January 2014.
Right now, in early January, production is just about finalized. Thousands of Kickstarter-backed books are nearly set, cut, bound, and packaged. Very soon, manufacturing will be wrapped up.
In mid-Jaunary, we’re going to transfer the books from our manufacturing location to our shipping location. Sending thousands of books over thousands of cumulative miles is a task unto itself—including the packing at one end and the unpacking on the other—but it looks like the whole process shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks.
By late January all the books will be unpacked, sorted, and 100% ready to go at our shipping facility. Once we get the green light, we're going to send out 8,760 books to 4,242 Kickstarter backers. Note: It will take about a week to ship 4k+ orders, which means there may be some overflow into February as we continue to send books out as they’re packed, labeled, and ready.
Once that's done we'll begin taking feedback and preparing to launch to the public. Thank you for your support thus far, we absolutely couldn’t have done it without you. If you have any questions you can always email us at hello@baronfig.com or tweet us via @baronfig.
—The Baron Fig Team
We here at Baron Fig love to play and explore, but we also take our task seriously. We’re committed to making Sketchbooks & Notebooks designed with an underlying philosophy of simplicity, usefulness & community. It’s our hope that if we create something we can truly love, perhaps you will too.
In our very first blog post we laid out three rules that we held ourselves to in developing the first Baron Fig product. To this day they guide us on our journey.
Over the last several months we’ve explained our priorities across different aspects of our endeavor—including design, work ethic, and communication. Despite all of this, we’ve yet to unify them in a mission statement that goes beyond the What and gets to the Why we do what we do.
As simple as it is, we’ve been working on our mission statement for a while now. It’s important that we get it right, because everything we do will be weighed against it. We hope you like it:
—The Baron Fig Team
PS. We’d love to hear what you think. Shoot us a line via @baronfig and let us know!
