Behind The Line: 80's Inspiration

As the warm weather approaches, we're thinking back on this time last year when we were having an absolute blast with our new summer designs, inspired by the 80s! Featuring vintage summer vibes and colors combined with equestrian elements, this line is one of our favorites!

We featured 4 main designs, plus a couple of companion designs. Let's take a look at what inspired them!

The Core 4 Designs:

The Malibu

Named after the beachside town in California, the Malibu Horseplay logo pairs beachy pastels with an 80's era brush script, coming together to create a perfect 80s summer vibe. In addition to stickers and a tee, we also printed this design on a boxy, slightly cropped tee that we LOVE wearing with vintage cut jeans or jean shorts for a cute horse girl look outside of the barn!

The Pretty Fresh

Classic 80s aqua and pink + a (Horse)play on words = The Pretty Fresh. Fresh in the 80s: cool, dope, awesome. Fresh to horse people: keep your heels down and maybe think about a lunge. We printed this fun design on tees, stickers, and a really fun hooded tank!

The Miramar

I had so much fun designing this one! The Miramar was inspired by, and named after, the setting of one of my all time favorite movies, Top Gun! I love the look and feeling throughout the movie - lots of orange, sunset type vibes especially in the opening sequence. That got me started on an idea for the early stages of this design. Adding in the silhouetted palm tree, retro, shutter style sunset, and neon type script helped cement the vibe, but something was still missing. After a couple of re-watches, we realized exactly what we needed: a fresh pair of aviators for Hijinx! We printed this design on tees, stickers, and a cropped raw edge hoodie! Check our instagram for a really neat behind the scenes video of printing this one, it's really fun watching the colors come together!

The Back In The Saddle

Inspired by another 80's classic film, Back to the Future, the idea for the Back in the Saddle logo popped into my head one day while working on one of the other designs for this line. Of our core 4 designs, it was probably the easiest one to finalize because it popped in my head as a fully formed design. Whether you're getting back in the saddle for the first time in years, or the 7th time today, it's a fun, action packed design with its bright colors and movement in the typography. This was also really fun to print, watching the gradient blend together, and the blue just put everything together at the end. It is available on tees and stickers!

Companion Designs:

The Pina Colada

Do you like pina coladas and holding the reins? Inspired by a favorite song and the occasional need for a frosty beverage after a long summer day at the barn. I think my favorite part of this whole design is that frosty cherry poking out of the top of the hurricane glass! Available as an individual sticker, and in our theme packs!

The VHS logo

We said this line was inspired by the 80's didn't we? Before streaming, blue rays, or even DVDs, we had VHS tapes. The colors and style of this design are a throwback to the packaging of blank VHS tapes of yesteryear.

Available as a single sticker, and in our theme packs!

Overall, this line was a fun trip down memory lane. While designing, we listened to LOTS of 80s music, watched tons of 80s movies, and stayed up way too late having way too much fun bouncing ideas off of each other. I would say the hardest part of designing for this line was limiting the amount of designs we actually released. For every line we release, there are usually 2-4 additional designs that don't end up being released for various reasons. With this line, we had probably 10 ideas we didn't release. The ideas just kept coming!

Thanks for reading! Looking forward to sharing more stories behind the designs soon! Vote below and let me know which one is your favorite!

Megan

Which one is your favorite?