Collecting
Among the collectors of aeronautical memorabilia there is a sub-culture of sickness-bag aficionados. The Guinness Book of Records recognises Dutchman Niek Vermeulen as the world record holder for the number of different bags (5468 as of 26 March 2008).
In 2004, Virgin Atlantic issued a limited edition set of half a million bags in collaboration with designer Oz Dean of 'forcefeed:swede'. Oz had conceived and run an online gallery of sick bags since 2000 under the project name "Design for Chunks". It challenged designers to illustrate the usually dull medium of the sick bag, as opposed to t-shirts or splash pages which were the standard challenges at the time.
Although the project achieved cult status in a short time amongst the design community, Dean felt that it had run its course and closed it down in 2003. With the offer of doing the project for real (from Virgin Atlantic) "DFC" was opened up again, in 2004, with the strapline "This time it's real!" The printed bags were intended to be on the global fleet of planes for 6 months but only lasted 3, with people walking through the aisles collecting the sets. The project divided opinion and this came as no surprise to Virgin Atlantic which is intentionally the more offbeat airline company in comparison to their traditional rivals, British Airways. The whole set of 20 finalists designs as a framed piece can be found in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at Heathrow, UK or online at the archived website.
Virgin Atlantic released another four bags promoting the Star Wars movie Episode III: Revenge of the Sith shortly after the "Design for Chunks" project.
Read more about this topic: Airsickness Bag
Famous quotes containing the word collecting:
“What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?”
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)
“Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)