Our Mission:
Ah Ha Brands celebrates moments of discovery and laughter with beautiful, useful, and clever products that feature art, humor, wordplay, and curiosities.
Our Story:
All of this nonsense began on a brisk spring evening back in 2016. I was sitting outside with friends at a local Philly Tap House, enjoying a cheap beer and chatting about the upcoming presidential election -- what else was anyone talking about back then? The absurdity of the race, the candidates, and the system, along with the beer, were fuel for a lazy conversation at the expense of politicians.
Well, wait a sec. I suppose to say that it started on that specific night would be a little bit of an overstatement. Sure, that was the birth of the first Ah Ha Brands series, but really it was just the culmination of a lifetime of bad puns. You see, puns, like all jokes, are a numbers game. You just say whatever pops into your head. Sometimes it will be good. More times it will be bad. But every attempt is just getting the bad ideas out of the way so that you land on that one perfect joke. The pun that is so obvious and so 'right' that there is no other answer. An almost inevitable wordplay, like it was just waiting for someone to discover it.
That night, I uttered the name 'Barack Ollama,' and it has set me down a path of puns, wordplay, and art ever since. At the time it got a few hearty laughs, but we quickly moved onto the next topic. But Barack Ollama stuck with me, and I found myself scribbling down names for other animal presidents. Thomas Girafferson. John Catams. Some were harder, and I enlisted the help of friends and family. Some helped begrudgingly, others dove into it head first. Soon I had a nearly full list of all 44 Presidents, with about a month to go until the election.
I would say that on average, that's where that story should have ended. Like most people, I typically get stuck in the idea stage. I had a full life, complete with a 9-6 job, romantic partner, friends, family, other hobbies, etc., so it was nearly impossible to make the time to take something from that sticky idea stage, and push it through to execution. But a Sunday afternoon of watching football got me anxious to DO something, and so I decided to draw all of these silly characters. And then I set a goal to post one a day to social media throughout the election. And then I set a goal to make a deck of playing cards from these cards, and call them The PreZOOdents.
Once I got started, it was hard to stop. For 2 years I continued to work my full-time job, but my heart wasn't in it. It was time to launch something new, and something exciting. New ideas were jotted down, the bad ones thrown out, the good ones started. And so here we are at the start of 2019, jumping into a crazy venture of puns, wordplay, discovery, and art, with Barack Ollama pushing me, willing or not, to keep playing the numbers game.
That's just the beginning of 'our story,' so keep checking back to be a part of it. Follow us on social media, send me feedback, tell me my work sucks, or tell me that you love it. But most of all, have some fun with it!