Creativity is King

What better way to start off the new version of this blog with a site that I visit all the time. “Frank151″ is a brand, it’s an online retailer, it’s a barber shop in NYC (Frank’s Chop Shop), it’s all sorts of shit. I don’t know the origins, I don’t know who all is behind it, but I know that these dudes design and sell some of the best fitted caps New Era puts their name on.

Nowadays, it seems like everyone and their mother has gotten NE to put out a fitted for them. (Although, notably, not JGoods. Who’s got the hookup for us??) Some designs are cool and draw inspiration from unexpected places:

Others are boring, lame, and make you wonder why anyone would bother buying a hat the reps a brand no one even knows featuring a design that makes no sense:

Now there’s no accounting for taste and “it’s not just the brand” and blah blah blah, but come on. What kind of effort do you think it took to put crossbones under a distorted Detroit Tigers logo? Ugh.

On the flipside, not only does Frank151 sell some of the more innovative and interesting hats made by other brands, the hats designed by Frank151 itself are far and away the highlights. Starting with their simple “F” logo hats (all featuring one of my favorite quotes of all time from Benjamin Franklin: “If you would not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy reading, Or do things worth the writing”):

Even cooler than these are the FDL Team caps. Frank151 created 20 different fictional teams to go along with 20 different U.S. cities, and they sell the fitted hats that fans of the team would wear. If the team existed. It’s an ingenious idea, and most of the names and logos are phenomenal.

LA Looters

Philly Bellringers

Atlanta Backwoods

The list goes on. (I cannot WAIT for the “Minneapolis Lumber Jackers” fitted. That will be bought in two winks of a coal miner’s eye.) This is exactly the kind of inventiveness we like to see here at CiK and will try to keep you informed of whenever possible.

All of the above caps (and then some) can be bought at the Frank151 website.

Thus endeth the inaugural first post here at Creativity is King.