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Hi there, it's Treebeard.  You may remember me from such hits at Catalog Covers Part 1 and Catalog Covers Part Duex. This is better than Return of the Jedi huh? Ok maybe not. But here is the third and final installation of "Catalog Covers".

The catalog year we left off on was 2011. The deer with the gas mask. It was Andy Wood's first catalog cover for Surly and he has been doing them ever since. That leads me to the MY 2012 catalog. It was the first major re-design of the catalog in years we had also decided to do some minimal color for the first time.

Color illustrated graphic of a Surly bikes catalog, showing unicorn riding a bike between 2 trees

Unicorns are have been a topic at Surlyville for some time and our Brand Manager Peter Redin had an interest in unicorns. He even has a sweet painting of one at his desk.

Framed, colored illustration of a unicorn, with planets, stars and a rainbow

So, Wood took that and ran with it. Logical right? A unicorn on a bicycle. That was the year the world was supposed to end. We are still here, makin' bikes and parts that don't suck.

On to 2113. The year of Der KRAMPUS!

Color illustrated graphic of a Surly bikes catalog, showing a Krampus character, riding a bike in the woods

Andy researched several renderings of the beast and got a certain product manager model to actually become Der Krampus for the 2013 catalog.

2014 is the year of the woodcut. Get it?

Color illustrated graphic of a Surly bikes catalog, showing a clown, monkey and a rabbit, stacked up, riding a bike

We actually had a typeface made for us by Mr Chank Deisel. Andy and I have had the pleasure of working with him in the past which made the project all the more fun. We also expanded to color palette to two colors. I know that is pretty crazy for us. Andy carved many of the letters by hand which is pretty cool. Here is a photo of him doing so.

One hand holding down a small piece of plywood, and the other hand, carving a Surly bikes catalog cover design into it

This leads me to last year.

 

I thought for sure I wasa gonna die! 
 Front view of Rosanna Danna, from Saturday Night Live, giving a thumbs up

But they can't kill me, despite their best efforts. I did think we were maybe going to kill Andy with all those drawings of bikes.

Color illustrated graphic of a Surly bikes catalog, showing a drawing, with the front right side view of a fat bike

We had decided a new format was need. POCKET SIZE! That is pretty sweet but everything shrinks just a tiny bit, so I got my shrink wrap gun out and that is the result. It was also the first year we actually did full color. We still like black and white but thought maybe we would try color in a slightly different way.  We also were able to print on news print for the first time. Pretty Cool. Andy did a great job with all those bikes and we are pretty proud of that one. Here are some photos of the inside.

Downward view of an open catalog spread, showing a Surly ECR bike above and text belowDownward view of an open catalog spread, showing a Surly Ogre bike above and text belowDownward view of an open catalog spread, showing a Surly Bill and Ted bike trailer above, and text below

Well it has been a pleasure taking you through the catalog covers. I love working on this stuff and it has been a joy to work on them with great people like Andy, Tyler, Ben and all the rest of the Surly crew. What will we do this year? Stay tuned...

 

Colored graphic illustration, showing a shadowed Riddler from Batman, above, and Surly spelled out below in white text

 

Till next time..

~TREEBEARD