by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com)
i’ve collected, designed, and studied matchbooks and matchbook artwork all my adult life. i’ve gathered together thousands and thousand of these little things and i still prefer to use matches rather than lighters for my needs. i love them. i’ve owned file boxes and file boxes crammed full of vintage covers. i still own about a dozen amazing matchbook artwork catalogs in my library. basically, there is not much out there that i haven’t seen a million times. but, this one is absolutely unique in my experience. i have seen seen one like this before, ever.
why? because the designer designed it SIDEWAYS! it’s the ONLY single matchbook cover i’ve ever encountered in my entire life that did this little trick. and it’s a brilliant solution, too. so simple, so easy and just plain thinking outside the box. i wish they still used matches in america, so i could start designing all my matchbook projects sideways like this. the interesting design ideas that this easy gimmick opens up to access is limitless. it’s a brilliant take on a very tired old object. hats off to the guy who paste this up.
if you look at the whole image on the entire folded-out cover, you’ll see it’s a photograph that wraps around front to back lengthwise side to side. the shape and dimensions of the photo dictated the sideways layout. so, i think this sideway design idea was a total accident, too.
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