Today is Truly Genius Tuesday, but we’re not going to talk about a genius from the Genius Series. Instead, we’ll explore that little asterisk on the Genius Series page- our Accidental Genius.

Why is Accidental not a Genius?

It says “I’m a Genius”. The print is more detailed like most of our Genius Series prints. However, we couldn’t call it Genius because, well, there’s a typo in the print.

From Genius to Accidental Genius

bumGenius and Flip diapers were arriving in our warehouse. The Marketing team was making the final plans for the release. The next genius, Giovanni, would be revealed to the world. Sometimes we make accessories that go with our Genius Series prints, like t-shirts, cups, and notebooks. I was sitting with one of our designers talking about this print. I’m a musician, so I was particularly excited about this print. I was explaining what all the terms in the print design mean.

FORTE: Loud

STACCATO: is short and sna-ha-ha-ha-py (busting out little of my music warm-ups from high school)

ADAGIO: A tempo mark directing that a passage is to be played rather slowly, leisurely and gracefully (for you Little Einsteins fans – “Let’s go adagio!”)

And then I came upon Crescendo… Cressendo? A crescendo is a gradual increase in loudness in a piece of music…. which is what was happening to my heartbeat. We misspelled crescendo. Not. so. genius. So we faced the facts. This print could not be called Giovanni. Then we told the truth, in a fun way, of course. The story of our Accidental Genius.

We’re shouting FORTE Dancing LEGATO… Jumping for joy STACCATO… It all culminates with a beautiful cressendo! Wait! Why does spellcheck keep saying this word is not correct… Hang on – let me go and… google it… OH NO! CRESCENDO! not CRESSENDO! We wish we could call it Genius. We wish we could call it Giovanni. But… it’s been demoted to an Accidental. In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch (or pitch class) that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature.

We made lemonade out of lemons and had a lot of fun in the process. And of course, we learned to always, always, ALWAYS use spellcheck. 😉

Shop Accidental!

Today only (7/18/17), we have some special sales* on select Accidental merchandise:
Genius Adult Tee Accidental – $7 off

bumGenius Original 5.0 cover Seconds: Accidental – $3 off

bumGenius Elemental E2 Seconds: Accidental – $3 off

*while supplies last!