Modern Dog's Junichi Tsuneoka wrote rough copy for the Cat Butt Gum packaging in grapmatically incorrect english (he's Japanese). Mitch loved it and the lost-in-translation concept carried over to the best-selling magnet set. Cat Butt has since been cross-bred into car fresheners, tote bags, and stickers.

INSTANT INFANT TO DIRTY GIRL
Before they had a single product idea, the Nash brothers had a name for their company: Blue Q. “We were outside, blue is a cool color, and Q is the best letter,” says Mitch Nash. “It meant nothing, but was perfect because it rhymed like a really, really short poem.” Then, in 1988, Seth, then 30, and Mitch, 28, had an epiphany —cardboard pets. Seth was an engineer and provided enough guidance to produce 10,000 2D cats in about three weeks. Mitch wrote a bit of silly copy, and the Flat Cat sold out of stores near their Pittsfield, Mass. home. They followed with an Instant Infant, secured national distribution, and went on to sell a couple million cardboard babies and pets. Blue Q quickly established itself as a producer of themed gift items, first adding magnets, then high-end bath and beauty products, car fresheners, tote bags, gums, and breath sprays.

Blue Q struck gift-manufacturer gold seven years ago with Mitch’s first bubble bath concept. He had worked with designers on previous products, but for this launch he wanted someone to cultivate a distinct new identity. Haley Johnson, then at Charles S. Anderson Design, created Dirty Girl, the peachy prima donna who soon lounged on powder room vanities around the world. Today a million-dollar brand, Dirty Girl gave Blue Q its first widely recognizable product and Johnson a new career. About 40 percent of Blue Q’s sales are derived from Johnson’s designs for Dirty Girl, Wash Away Your Sins, Total Bitch, and Boss Lady, among others. Not a single package looks alike. “Haley’s the sharpest knife in the drawer,” says Mitch. “She’s very good at hitting a specific person in the market. I just stand back and marvel at what she does.”

With Dirty Girl’s success, Mitch began finding appropriate designers to match each new product idea. “Since we’re a small company, our gig is to bring in the look, import the options,” says Mitch. “It’s more expensive, but we have to use lots of outside people to keep it fresh.”

Haley Johnson's Boss Lady line is the most recent in a long list of looks that span the Egyptian Pharaoh regality of Queen and the Art-Deco class of hot and flashy. “She's getting to explore one era and one design aesthetic at a time," says Mitch.

INNER BEAUTY
About a dozen designers currently contribute to the Blue Q brand, but not always by submitting package layouts. Along with the executions of his own ideas, Mitch pays his crew to generate lists of new product names, asks them to write copy, and—something relatively unheard of—gives commission on products they design. Mitch’s dedication to nurturing great work has given Blue Q a reputation among designers as a dream client. Charles S. Anderson, who’s designed Blue Q car fresheners and gums, equates Mitch to his other famously design-savvy client, French Paper’s Jerry French. “It’s rare to find a client who cares as much as we do,” says Anderson. “Mitch understands that design can not only sell the product, but it can be a product. That’s the idea.”

“They want to make stuff you never want to open,” says Dana Wyse, creator of several Blue Q breath sprays. “They find great artists and designers; they pay attention to the writing. It’s not just an object glued to a cardboard backing. You can pick up the piece and read it several ways. It’s a challenge to fit all that onto one small package.”

Blue Q also pays remarkable attention to what inhabits that package by using all-natural, appropriate ingredients. “Blue Q walks this line between novelty and actual legitimate, quality products that nobody else comes close to,” says Dan Ibarra of Aesthetic Apparatus. “They’ll take some insane idea for a product like Total Bitch soap but use great quality materials and artists and end up with not only a hilarious product but a beautiful object.” So while Gay Gum is sprinkled amongst fluorescent prophylactics at the Hustler store, Dirty Girl lip balm is green enough to be stocked at Whole Foods, Miso Pretty body mist is featured at Nordstrom, and Understand Modern Art breath spray can be found at the Andy Warhol Museum.

Driving the details for the company’s perfect premises is the easily excitable Mitch Nash, playing a role that the Q-llaborators can’t seem to define. “Man, working with Mitch is more like working with a great art director than a client,” says Ibarra. “There’s no need to over explain a concept or an execution, he just gets it all.”

“Mitch is all about sensation, discovery,” says Wyse. “He’s nine years old. With other clients it’s business first. With Mitch it’s a sort of show-and-tell energy. ‘Hey, look at this cool watch!’ or ‘Did you hear that guitar riff?" Both Wyse and Vinnie D’Angelo count Mitch’s eagerness to share his thoughts as their favorite parts of working with him. “Mitch is the only client who calls in the middle of the night to reconfirm or swap out Pantone colors for a given project, or to share a delightful recipe for braised catfish,” says D’Angelo, of Butterysmooth.