Creativity is just a wonderful thing. It brings about so much emotionally, and when it come about for the creator, the art speaks.
Digging deep into my photo archive of places that I’ve taken inspo pics, I came across a shot I had taken when visiting Cape May (October 2019) for whale watching. Such a great opportunity to just hang with family and do something together. Regardless of not seeing any whales, clearly our Whale language maybe rusty. It was such a great time to get out and refresh. With a lot of what’s happening, I took this as a sign of reflection.
Of all the photos I’ve collected, I gravitated to the one of sand. The sand was so smooth and rugged simultaneously, in a way that the sand had been so beautifully rippled from when the tide lowered in conjunction with the rolling winds adding wisps of sand to its curves.
Granted, it was quite the bright day and the sun casted such a bright glare it almost washed out the sand in the photo. Playing around with the filters, I came across a combination that gave off this cool purple tone as if I had used a lighting gel.
So back track... a lot of design research and development was trying to integrate this within XV. This would be the first of debuting a photo manipulation versus a made graphic. Wanting to almost satisfy the two ideas, I then wanted to get that final look.
Playing with all editing and design feature details, I found a filter that layered on that gave a cutout effect and burnt on this acidic/burnt contrast that literally made me say, “Check!”
The whole serendipitous moment of all this was because when viewing the whole design in its entirety, the cutouts/burnouts shape a deconstructed XV. A fucking sign, Ace of Base moment, it opened up my eyes.
I quietly debuted it featuring it in the XV Signature Cozy Tee collection and then in the XV ICONIC collection. The vibes of this photo manipulation gives me all the feels and pairs perfectly with the aesthetic of XV PEACE OUT. These concepts are being worked on to create an XV next level creation.
Until then, take some time to explore both XV PEACE OUT motif + XV Acid Sand prints in our current portfolio. We also welcome a new addition to the XV Gallery the XV Acid Sant print on canvas for giving your home decor some change of character.