Howard and James, two good friends of mine started Massif Central a few years back to illustrate your achievements in the most beautiful of ways. The brand has grown from strength to strength, creating more and more beautiful pieces.
Shot by Pat Meagher
MaCe_Kickstarter_Full from Massif Central on Vimeo.
The prints originally started being designed individually and James and Howard are now aiming to create a software that allows you to design your challenge online.
There are some fantastic rewards from 3D printed achievements, shirts, challenges such as cycling up Mount Ventoux or spending a day in the studio with the team.
Here is some information from the boys themselves:
WHAT WE DO - We design beautiful memento artworks of sporting and other achievements.
THE AIM - Help us build an online portal - 'The Massifier' - for people to create their own bespoke artworks of their achievements.
WHAT THEY SAY - Chris Froome - Winner of the 2013, 2015 & 2016 Tour de France "The MassifCentral Limited Edition 100th Tour de France print is awesome."
WHAT WE DO
MassifCentral (MaCe) illustrate achievements; turning your life-changing challenges, unforgettable holidays and great journeys into sophisticated infographic artworks that also tell the story behind the effort and the enjoyment.
MassifCentral was set up two years ago. After completing a long distance cycle adventure with a bunch of friends, we wanted to create a different kind of memento to give to each member of the group. Instead of the usual photos, medals or certificate, we wanted something that was beautiful in its own right and that could tell the story of the experience at the same time.
That first design quickly led us to start producing similar artworks for other people. Whether the achievement be cycling, running, triathlon, skiing, hiking, sailing or something else, we've always worked to produce prints that remain true to those early principles of beauty and story-telling. And the reaction we've had to our designs has been brilliant.
Initially this work was all done pretty much by hand. We manually traced route profiles and worked out angles using the most basic of tools. Each artwork took weeks, if not months, to produce. Over the course of time we have refined our techniques, streamlined our processes and expanded the possibilities. But, even with some initial software that we developed last year, building each artwork is still a very labour intensive process that stops us from reaching more people.
Photo by Pat Meagher
AIMS
We want to develop an intuitive, user-controlled online portal that allows people to create their own bespoke Massif Central artworks; easily pulling in their own GPX data, making choices about look and size from our carefully curated designs, and adding their own thoughts and memories to an automatically populated geography. We will still print everything individually, and pack and ship with the same love and care we do now.
The initial software we have developed so far is great. But it's only the seed of what we need. It's not an outward facing item and it needs expanding and testing on all platforms. It needs to interface with Strava and Google Maps. It needs to help customers make decisions about what to include and what to exclude. It needs to be simple and clever at the same time, allowing people to create, preview, save and order their own memento artworks.
We know what we need to do to achieve this. We have the skilled people lined up to do it. What we don’t have is the funding to put the wheels in motion. That is what we are looking for here..
TIMESCALE
Big plans to grow and expand the business.
May 2014 - Massif Central Launched
May 2015 - Initial Software Development Started
November 2015 - Initial Software Delivered
November 2016 - Kickstarter
December 2016 - Developed Software Development To Begin
January 2017 - First Rewards Delivered
March 2017 - Developed Software Completion
April-May 2017 - Developed Software Testing / Soft launch
May 2017 - Developed Software Launch
Thanks for reading. We hope you will join with us on our next great adventure.
James & Howard
