Meet The Curator: Crystal
Head of Customer Success at OwlCrate
Many long-term OwlCraters may already know me from the YouTube days with Cori. My name is Crystal, and I have been with OwlCrate for the past nine years. Once the lone customer support agent, I am now the Head of Customer Success and, as it seems, part-time Designer of Fun Things.
When not taking care of my OwlCrate duties, I'm more than likely watching a movie. I'm a Cinema Frequenter, Comic Book Reader, Amateur Gamer, and general Lover of Pop Culture. And of course, I read books.
I have always been creative but would never use the word "artist." I was never good at the traditional "draw something!" but was creative in other ways. In August 2023, Mayra (also from Team OwlCrate) helped me set up access to Figma and showed me a few things. Game. Changer. This was the medium I always needed.
I recently started using ProCreate and love it! There were always things I thought would make a great sticker, poster, mug, but could never find them in the world. Now, I can make the things I want to see. It's pretty fun.
Interview Time
What was the inspiration behind creating the Pulp Fictional Coffee Mugs?
Honestly, this mug collection was created from simply making something to make someone on the team smile and laugh. Cute and ridiculous. When I was first learning the basics in Figma, I used Ozwald, our OwlCrate mascot, as inspiration, making him Halloween costumes!
One of those designs became OzBot, a name and emoji we use all the time. That little OzBot inspired the original version of the Sci-Fi mug, which I created for the Customer Support Team—as personalized inside jokes. We are a close bunch.
I always wanted to make more genre-based, Oz-themed coffee mugs for others on the team, so when we were getting close to the launch of the Quarterly subscriptions, I made a romance-themed mug design for Sophie—and that is pretty much the mug that exists for everyone now.
The pulp art designs come from my love of comic books and that style of art. Pulp novels are, in my opinion, the B-Movies of the book world, and the cover art is always awesome—even if often ridiculous. I love the layout, the colors, and the cheeky taglines. They're great! While I haven't read many, I love the cover designs. Sci-fi, robots, monsters. Amazing!
This is the second product collection you've worked on. This time around, what were some of the challenges you faced while bringing these coffee mugs to life?
I'm inspired by the things I love and things that will make people smile. I love Shakespeare and had this idea for promotional posters for the play within a play (Pyramus and Thisbe) in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I actually created these posters as a pet project, but one of them featured a masquerade mask. I then got the idea to create a themed mask for each of the characters in Midsummer, and that's how my first product collection, Midsummer Masquerade, was born. The mask that started it all, Lion, is not in the collection, but the donkey mask for Bottom is one of my favorite things ever.
The biggest challenge for those, and even more so for the Pulp Fictional Mug Collection, was keeping things consistent and cohesive while making sure each design still had its own personality. Because the Sci-Fi mug already existed in a previous form, I had a template for how to move forward with six new designs.
There are some obvious parallels between the Adult Fantasy and YA mugs, the Romance and Romantasy mugs have similar vibes, and the Sci-Fi and Horror have that little bit extra while still staying in line with the other four. There were times I had creative blocks and struggled to come up with ideas.
The Horror mug took some time, but once I found the little missing piece, it all came together, and it's now one of my favorites. The Adult Fantasy and YA both started as one thing but, in the end, became something almost completely different. I like the way they all turned out.
I do want to say I definitely had help and great feedback while working on these, and I thank those people. One main note was to really lean into the color scheme of each Quarterly subscription in order to match each individual genre and the boxes we ship them in.
If you had to pick just one, do you have a personal favorite mug from the collection, and what makes it stand out to you?
I caaaaaan't. They all mean something to me in one way or another. I do love the Romance mug because it was the first one that came together—from the side-eye, wide-eyed lovesick Oz, to the fake dating title, to the speech bubble tagline. This book would be my jam!
OzBot will always hold a special place in my heart, but I think Horror became my favorite in the end. It gives appreciative little nods to all tropes and "rules" of the schlocky slasher movies. I love it. Plus, Oz in a bloody Jason-esque mask? Classic.
I showed this collection to a friend of mine recently, and she said she could see my personality in each one—and that made me really happy. I hope everyone enjoys a little bit of whimsy with these mugs.
Pulp Recommendations From Crystal
When I think of pulp novels, I generally think of sci-fi or monster stories, but westerns and adventure stories were once popular too.
For something classicly sci-fi, I really like John Wyndham, famous for Day of the Triffids and Midwich Cuckoos. I also enjoyed The Kraken Wakes.
For crime with those film-noir vibes, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler seem to fit the bill. In my opinion, Hammett's Thin Man series is iconic; Nick and Nora Charles are relationship goals.
For horror... Lovecraft. And though I haven't read either, Edgar Rice Burroughs offers adventure stories with Tarzan and Mars stories with John Carter. Asimov has been on my TBR forever, and I may need to use this as a reason to finally get cracking on that!
For something modern with that pulpy, campy feel, I'd suggest Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez. I enjoyed that one a lot for its B-Movie vibe.
Here are some examples of pulp magazine covers that inspired the Pulp Fictional Coffee Mugs:
Shop The Collection
Exclusive Behind The Scenes Content
FUN FACT: There is an Easter egg on the Pulp Fictional Sci-Fi mug.
I'm just going to drop that here and let you figure that out.
Initial concept of the OzBot Coffee Mug I made for the customer support team:
Timelapse of how the Romance Pulp Fictional Coffee Mug came to life:
