Post #559293 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Oct 12, 2010 10:57 AM

Which artwork? Hmmm... Here is the story of the genesis of this mug:

I really felt strongly about wanting to be the one who would design the mug for the momentous occasion of the Tiki Ti's 50th anniversary, since the Tiki Ti had so much to do with my (and Jeff Berry's) genesis of becoming Tikiphiles. I wanted it to be not just another Tiki mug, and I wanted it to be linked the the Ti's original logo Tiki.

Now if the Tiki Ti ever had a logo Tiki, it would be this one:

Now this design was a little too minimalistic to make a mug out of, so I went back to the original art work that Ray, in the spirit of the transmission tradition, had based this design on:

The only three years earlier Kon Tiki Montreal menu Tiki from 1958.

I had always liked that "God of the Cocktail" concept, which was only used here and by the Kalua Room in Seattle:

Since I am not a trained artist, I enlisted the help of Mark Noland to do a computer rendering based on the menu Tiki:

In this rendering, the color scheme of the finished mug becomes clear: The brown Tiki will be holding a yellow bamboo mug!

Mark's renderings greatly helped me and Holden to zero in on the final design. With the one above it became clear that the space between the Tiki and the bamboo mug would not work. What if the Tiki would not just hold, but actually sip on the drink himself? Done!
I am looking forward to seeing the Tiki Ti customers sitting in a row on their bar stools, with these mugs sitting on the bar, and the imbibers sharing their concoctions with the Tiki on the other side of the mug facing them! :)

Luckily I also was able to twist Kevin Kidney's arm away from his super busy schedule and have him render the original Asian font on the bamboo mug! Mucho Mahalos, Mark and Kevin!

Next: The history of the weird nose, and how some mistakes are better not fixed.