Description
The Wildlife Treasury was a subscription-based card collection, featuring an encyclopedia of the world’s animals. The first package included a bright green plastic case to put your card collection in, and then each month additional cards would come in the mail, where you would have to sort them.
Discussion
I loved these as a kid. I think this fed right into my sense of order and arrangement – by needing to organize and shelf each card in the specific Order/Genus/etc – along with my imagination. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so family trips were wherever a KOA Campsite and a day’s drive could take us.1Often listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run So these cards allowed my young brain to wonder. Looking at them now, they really do feel like slow-motion Instagram of the late 70’s.
Inspiration points
- How might we use subscription to heighten excitement and to paper over the fact that I won’t have every single piece of furniture or urban typology mapped out, since I’m only one person, and there continue to be new products put onto the streets.
- How might I use the card format to make it more playful – the City is here for us to use as Adam says.
- I love the simple taxonomy icons. Full stop.
- The use of great photography.
- This is surely a nostalgic play on my part, but I loved these.
More inspiration
Rooftop Catalogue by MVRDV
Axonometric views of NYC as inspiration
