I considered switching the order of this and Lufthansa but I ended up putting this in the top spot simply based on how much visual joy this gave me. This was fun, awkward, comforting (in that it wasn’t super weird but just weird enough), and it was non-stop in the amount of explorations and knick-knacks produced — from beanies to patches to keychains. Comparisons to other “hipster” projects abounded in the comments but, in some ways, I feel like that aesthetic had been simmering all these years and this project took it to its boiling point — that’s a metaphor for “This is the best of its kind”. See what else happened on Brand New each year since publication began in 2006