The Eastwood Company: Upsell Interstitial

In October of 2021, I joined The Eastwood Company as their Senior Designer, UI and Branding. Instantly, I was tasked with creative and web projects to better the customers experience on the web and in their retail stores. Over the past few months I've played a significant role in critical company-wide projects. It has been very rewarding to brainstorm, research and problem solve to find new solutions for different aspects of the company.

Starting at Eastwood in October meant I was starting just in time for the holiday shopping hustle and bustle. One of my first main projects was working on an upsell interstitial to encourage customers to add more items, or stocking stuffers, to their carts. Once a customer adds an item to the cart, this interstitial would pop up and ask the customer if they would like to add any of the suggested universal products. After the customer selects products and adds them to the cart or closes out of the interstitial, the customer is then taken to the cart where they can proceed with checkout.

This test was successful and eventually we modified the interstitial copy and products to use it after the holidays as well.

Genesis Bow Photoshop Composite

I have been working on a brochure design for the Lancaster Archery Foundation and wanted an image that I could wrap around the front and back of the cover. However, this original image was not nearly as clean as I would like it to be, so I tossed it in Photoshop and began to clean it up. Below is the original image. 

As you can see, there are a ton of tree branches, poles and wires throughout the background. The right side of the photo is on the front cover of the brochure so I definitely needed to remove the branches to the far right. Using various Photoshop tools such as the clone tool and patch tool, I was able to remove the clutter in the sky on the right side. On the left side, however, there was a bit too much to still keep the integrity of the coloring of the sky. I still roughly blended out the branches, but needed to find a stock image to replace the area behind the targets.

After searching for photos on Adobe Stock's website, I found the below image that I felt I could manipulate to work as part of the background. The perspective was similar and I wanted to keep the rural farm scene since the Foundation is in Lancaster, PA. While the color is way off from the original image, I knew I could adjust it so it will all work together.

I ended up only using the left part of this image, and in fact, I used it twice. The farm in the distance is shown in my composite, all the way to the single tree. I then actually flipped the image to complete the background behind the archer. I blended the sky so that it wouldn't be obvious that the photo has been reflected and used in two different parts of the composite. I carefully masked out the stock photos to blend with the background of the original image to create a seamless transition from the foreground and background.

After editing the colors in Camera Raw and using different curves layers, the pieces really began to work together. I also added a Gaussian blur to mimic the original photos depth of field. Of course, I had to clip out the targets in front of the new background, as well as the archer. I had to reconstruct some of the strings of the bow as well but creating shapes and blurring them to resemble the originals.

Once I felt that the images worked as a whole, I began to add some effects that were applied to the entire photo. I wanted to recreate the warm glow in the sky that is in the original image. I added a yellow oval, significantly blurred the shape, adjusted the opacity and adjusted the blend mode. I also added a photo filter layer to the composite to further tie the images and lighting together. 

Overall I am very happy with how the Photoshop composite turned out, and am now able to implement it in my brochure design. Stay tuned for a future post on the final project!

LAS Casey K. Digital Billboard

In July, Lancaster Archery ran a digital billboard campaign to advertise Easton arrows and promote Casey Kaufhold who was representing LAS at the games in Tokyo. The designs had to comply with strict guidelines set by the Olympic Committee. Additionally, I used co-op funds for these billboards, so I worked with Easton to get their approval on the design as well. Below is what we landed on for the main promotion.

My relationship working with Oaktree Outdoor Advertising has significantly grown over the years. Fortunately we are able to get a bit more bang for our buck when we advertise with them. Therefore, we were able to run an additional design to say "good luck" to our hometown hero, Casey.

To apply for our co-op funds I must provide documentation of our live billboards. The billboard company is great at providing these screenshots. Below is an example of what they look like.

This main billboard design can also be seen on my portfolio website at http://triciabaugher.com/portfolio-caseybillboard.html

TriciaBaugher.com

Most recently I've been spending my free time on recreating my portfolio website. It recently became a goal of mine to organize my work, files and portfolio to have everything in one place. Over the course of several years, I find that I have work on several different laptops and workspaces scattered within many different folders. I officially have an external hard drive that is organized with work from the past ten years or so, and better yet - a brand new portfolio website!

I started by sifting through the endless templates available for purchase on Theme Forest. This is a great place to find really creative templates to customize. I found one I liked and, well, could not for the life of me figure out where to start. It's been several years since I worked with code and this particular site was way more complicated than I could handle. Therefore, I went back to find a more simpler site that'd be based in HTML. I was relieved when I opened these files and they made a LOT more sense.

I ended up working in Dreamweaver with the code/design split view. I found this really helpful as I was essentially relearning how to edit code. Through lots of trial and error, I got the site to a point that I was extremely happy with. I created a few templates in Photoshop to have a consistent look to my images. I also wrote content for each project to provide additional insights into my thoughts and processes behind each design. 

I stripped the website template down to the bare minimum, having only my portfolio be the landing page and a simple about me page. I can always build upon this in the future, but for now I am really pleased with the simplicity. I tested the desktop and mobile versions relentlessly as the site is built to be responsive. I plan to continue to add a few more pieces of work to it, while keeping everything up to date. It feels great to have a working website again!

I also learned about meta tags throughout this process. I don't recall twitter cards and og meta tags back when I had been designing in HTML before. This again took plenty of trial and error, but anything can be found in a good ol' Google search.

Check it out for yourself! TriciaBaugher.com

Squarespace Website Mocks

Here are some new "glamour shots", aka Photoshop composites, of the two Squarespace websites I have designed at Lancaster Archery.

LancasterArcheryFoundation.org

CompetitionArcheryMedia.com

I find it very critical when mocking up website designs to include desktop and mobile versions. Tablet versions can also be included in the mocks when necessary. I always like to feature the index page on the desktop version and additional pages on other formats when able.

2021-2022 Lancaster Archery Catalogs

The 2021-2022 Lancaster Archery Catalogs began hitting mailboxes last Saturday. The now 580 page catalog consists of over 110 vendor advertisements, more than 450 pages of products, arrow charts, content pages and cover pages.

This year looked a bit different without the Archery Tradeshow (ATA) in January, but the catalog production process seemed to still go quite smoothly. We were able to start production a bit earlier since there was less travel, and we were able to complete production within three months. I led the production schedule to assure that we would hit our targets along the way. Everyone worked as a solid team throughout the entire process and we can all be proud of the final result!

Above is a glance inside at some of our bows we have included in our catalog. It also includes a push to the Lancaster Archery YouTube channel featuring a playlist of recent bow reviews. It was great to be able to inject some content throughout the catalog in addition to all of the products and advertisements.

Our social media coordinator launched some graphics and we began including catalog callouts in some print and digital ads. Below is a social graphic that includes the cover.

For our internal staff we also get spiral bound catalogs printed. These catalogs are a bit larger in size, feature a heavier paper weight to make them much more durable and a spiral to allow for more flexibility. I use mine throughout the year to keep notes on products and it is essentially the master of the production process for the following year.

They are certainly not a cheap option, however, they are produced with high quality that allows them to withstand paging through them daily, being tossed in bags during travel and adding notes throughout an entire year.

The digital catalog is also available at the link in the footer of LancasterArchery.com or directly here. Customers can page through digitally and click on item numbers to go to the product page on our website. Customers can also request a catalog and get one sent in the mail. Currently when you place an order on our site, you will also receive one with your order.

I hope everyone is enjoying the 2021-2022 Lancaster Archery catalogs. A lot of time and effort goes into creating these, and I am happy to say I believe this is the best one yet. I look forward to continuing to improve processes to make production go smoothly and also find more solutions to make this an even better resource guide for archers and dealers.

Terre Hill

A little over two years ago, we bought our first home in Terre Hill, Pennsylvania. In true fashion, I wanted to design a few décor items for our home. The main being a canvas to hang in the entryway right inside our front door. The canvas would be seen coming into the home, and also from the one hallway. 

I loved the concept of overlapping typography and decided to do a large "B" for our last names in the background with "Terre Hill, Pennsylvania" in a script typeface on top of the "B". I experimented with various background colors and textures until landing on a light wooded image. I also included our settlement date, which has actually been quite nice to reference the exact day! 

The large "B" is in Baskerville, one of my favorite serif fonts. The location is in a version of the very popular script font Bombshell. The date is also in Baskerville to tie everything together.

I then had this printed on a canvas, which added another textural element. The finished product is 13" x 36". Overall I am very pleased with how this canvas came out. It's a nice bright and unique piece for our home.