Designed in 2006, released in 2016

″[…] Maybe we should say something about the print we designed for The New Shoppingbag. In fact, we created the pattern for Susan Bijl already 10 years ago, in 2006 – but for a couple of technical reasons, the actual bag only came out much later, in 2016. In short, it’s a pattern based on the classic ‘Thank You’ print that you can find on these plastic bags that you always get in deli/corner-shops in New York (those ‘Thank You’ bags are probably pretty common all over the US, but for some reason we really associate them with NY).

Because we regard The New Shoppingbag pretty much as an archetypical bag, we thought it needed an archetypical print – that’s why we decided to just take that ‘Thank You’ slogan add the name ‘Susan Bijl’ to it, and turn it into a pattern. It’s of course quite a paradoxical act – stealing the print of a plastic throw-away bag, and putting it on a Susan Bijl bag (which is obviously a more sustainable bag), while thanking Susan Bijl at the same time (for producing these sustainable bags). So although the print itself is quite simple, the gesture is a bit more layered.

And as for that ‘promotional picture’ we made for the ‘Thank You’ bag – it’s just a quick snapshot of us, wearing the bags on our heads. In fact, it sort of refers to the 7-inch sleeve of The Damned’s ‘Neat Neat Neat’ (1977). In that sense, it’s somewhat of a homage – not only to The Damned, but also to the late, great Barney Bubbles (1942–1983), the graphic designer of that particular sleeve […]″

From: www.susanbijl.nl