The Solo Jazz Pattern

About

The Solo Jazz Pattern is the name given to an iconic blue, purple and white sketch pattern found on a type of waxed paper cup manufactured at first by Sweetheart Cup Company, beginning in 1992, and later acquired by the Solo Cup Company in 2004. The pattern, which has a long-standing fan base online, rose to mainstream popularity during a Reddit campaign to find its designer in 2015.

Origin

The Solo Jazz pattern was created in the art department of the Sweetheart Cup Company in the early 1991 and began production across a variety of waxed paper products in 1992.^[1] In 2012, users of the photo-sharing website dump.fm began re-appropriating the pattern and photoshopping it into different environments – some users estimate that over 100,000 different images using the pattern were created.^[4][5] These images spread across Tumblr and Reddit, often used in reference to nostalgia for the 1990s. A dedicated Facebook page was created on February 6th, 2012; as of June 2015, the page had more than 4,000 fans.^[2] A Tumblr was created the same day, and posted continuously until October 2014.^[3] The earliest known mention of the cups on Reddit was an image post in the subreddit /r/nostalgia on November 14th, 2013, which received 86 points (93% upvoted).^[6]

In April of 2015, clothing company 1991Inc created a line of clothing featuring the pattern, which quickly sold out after being featured in notable blogs like those of the Laughing Squid^[7] and Pee Wee Herman.^[8]

Spread

Reddit AMA Request and Springfield News-Leader Article

On June 9th, 2015, reddit user mcglaven posted in /r/IAmA looking for the designer of the Solo Jazz pattern with five questions and claiming that Google searches had turned up nothing about their identity.^[1]

1. Did you get paid well for your work? Did you get royalties? 2. Did you anticipate how ubiquitous this image would become? 3. How long did you spend on this design? 4. What does it feel like to have something you designed become a part of 90s culture that will be remembered for generations? 5. Where were you in your career when you came up with this design? Did it hurt or help it?"

One reply was from user pdschatz, who claimed to have been one of the original re-appropriators of the image on dump.fm; the user claimed that he had emailed Solo Cup to find out more, and had learned that it was designed by a woman named Gina in 1991 in a design contest.

From there, a journalist named Thomas Gounley picked up the search for a newspaper called the Springfield News-Leader, in Springfield Missouri, the region in which the cups were manufactured. He was able to track Gina down to Aurora, Illinois, and interview her for his story. He began with the five questions asked by mcglaven on Reddit.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References