AmericanMuscle Holiday Gift Garage

It's been a while, to say the least. Most of the summer was consumed of designing for the AmericanMuscle Mustang Show, traveling here and there and moving to a new spot. I'd like to pick back up where I am currently, and then hopefully backtrack to share some of the show graphics.

Every year the holiday promotions seem to get bigger and more involved. This year, the company has introduced zmags, an outlet for the graphic designers to create custom landing pages without having to utilize our busy e-commerce developers. I worked on the AmericanMuscle Holiday Gift Garage campaign that included a zmags landing page, on-site graphics, email graphics, display adwords, social graphics and catalog covers and inserts.

I started with a really awesome in-house photo of our 2015 Mustang in the snow. I made a few adjustments in Camera Raw to boost the image quickly.

I wanted the overall campaign to have an icy winter feel to it, so I began by color changing the car to Grabber Blue and building out the background for the catalog cover. The build out is a bit rough, but worked with the layout I had.

I also needed to cut out the car for the web graphics I intended to use. Additionally, I wanted to render out the other car generations from Keyshot, so I removed the car from the scene in Photoshop so the other cars would lay over top. I kept the original wheels and shadow to get the placement of the new cars in their accurately. Below is the back plate I used for the renders.

I added cars into Keyshot and added additional aftermarket parts to them that were built in-house. Below is the 2014 Mustang with added mods that was placed in the scene, color changed and with an HDRI map applied and edited to look closely to the original 2015. 

I repeated this process for the other four Mustang generation cars. While those were rendering, I focused on the layout of the custom zmags landing page. 

I started off with a rough concept for both desktop and mobile. I wanted to combine lifestyle imagery and product imagery throughout the layout while working with the categories selected by the Marketing Department. Without having all of the finalized product sku's and images, I came up with the below version for desktop.

Through a few rounds of revisions, it landed closely to the above design and was then made generationally. I used the rendered cars at the top of this and then a mix of in-house lifestyle photography and product photography. I incorporated sliders into a few categories as well as off-car product photography to give the layout dimension and variety. Throughout the entire layout, I placed a vector geometric pattern that symbolized wrapping paper. Overall the goal was to have a winter feel with holiday hints carried throughout. Below is a closeup of a section with the "wrapping paper" pattern darkened to more easily see the design.

Note: the above image was pulled from Fox Racing and was the design inspiration and direction for the Holiday Gift Certificate Promotion I'll show later. I also incorporated these vector elements in the campaigns logo I was working on simultaneously.

"Holiday Gift Garage - The Perfect Presents" was the marketing copy for this entire package. Similarly to last year, I designed a logo to be used throughout the campaign to be included in web graphics and on the catalog covers. I used the above vector pattern within the logo I designed and created a version to be used on white and on black.

I also needed a version with slightly different copy to be used in display ads and Facebook social graphics.

Before sending all of the above into the proofing system, I did a quick mock of the AmericanMuscle catalog cover for the 2015-2017 generation. The layout of the copy was later revised, but the overall imagery and concept was approved.

Once the above was approved, I made some tweaks per request and began making the additional site, email, display and social graphics while building out the zmags landing page. I did the full package for the '15-'17 generation first before duplicating and creating the others. Below is the final 2010-2014 generation homepage hero.

When the customer clicks on Shop Gifts, they are taken to the zmags landing page. Below is the 2015-2017 landing page I had designed and built via the Creator.

While the campaign is still live on AmericanMuscle.com, you can view and interact with the landing page here. The final catalog cover design for that same generation is below. As you can see I incorporated the vector elements on the front and back cover as I had throughout the landing page.

The catalogs arrived in customers' mailboxes this month and also featured an insert that included products within the Holiday Gift Garage. Below is the 4-page insert design. 

Many other graphics were built to promote this campaign on the various channels. Below includes email graphics and display ads.

Promotional Apparel Designs

AmericanMuscle and ExtremeTerrain are by no means an apparel company, however, over the holidays the two stores typically need a few t-shirt and hoodie designs for promotions and campaigns. Throughout the year I try to design and gather apparel designs so when promotions arise, we have things to choose from rather than rushing to create them. Below are the three designs I worked on for this years holiday promotional apparel. The designs include one ExtremeTerrain t-shirt, one ExtremeTerrain hoodie and one AmericanMuscle hoodie. The two ExtremeTerrain items have been used in the promotion I previously posted. 

The Voyager t-shirt above features a one-color vector design on the front that plays off of the idea of navigation and the compass. Nature and automotive design elements are included in this design to embrace the lifestyle of the ExtremeTerrain customer. On the back is the ExtremeTerrain logo. These dark navy graphics are screen printed on a sand colored poly-cotton t-shirt. You can purchase this hoodie here at ExtremeTerrain.com.

The Altitude hoodie above features a one-color vector design on the front. It features the XT logo and elements from the ExtremeTerrain logo to blend the two marks together. On the sleeve is a smaller XT logo that can be seen while driving and exploring the trails. The two white graphics are screen printed on a quality dark gray hoodie. You can purchase this hoodie here at ExtremeTerrain.com.

The Turbulence hoodie above features a two-color vector design on the front. It breaks apart the traditional AmericanMuscle logo and added hash marks and design elements have been added to complete the design. "American" has been knocked out so the blue from the hoodie comes through similarly to how the original logo is colored. On the sleeve is a similar one-color hash mark design featuring the AM logo that can be seen easily while driving. These vector graphics are screen printed on a quality deep royal hoodie.


I worked closely with the Merchandising team to source the garments and select the correct apparel colors and Pantones. All of these studio photos were taken by our in-house photographers. As always, I am looking forward to completing more apparel designs for these two stores and working with other designers to get their ideas printed as well.

ExtremeTerrain Holiday Promotion

This year ExtremeTerrain.com is running a holiday promotion when customers purchase gift certificates. When a customer spends a certain amount he/she receives a t-shirt, and if more is spent one gets a hoodie. These garments have been designed and printed specifically for this promotion and have become new products on the site.

In addition to designing these two apparel items, I wanted to create unique imagery for the promotion. I sourced several examples that inspired the final creative. My primary inspiration came from the motorcycle industry, are you surprised? I truly appreciate the photography from Fox Racing and The Fast House, and pushed in the direction of the following photos from The Fast House site.

What attracted me to most of these was the shallow depth of field which brought a solid focus to the product. I also really enjoyed the lights in the background that would give my creative the holiday touch it needed. I was primarily drawn to the first image with the yellow shirt in the foreground. I thought the person in the background could represent the Jeep I needed to show in the ExtremeTerrain creative. Because this campaign was promoting two apparel items, I referenced the web banner with the two jerseys side by side. With that said, I began to work with one of our in-house photographers to make the vision come to life. Below is the shots we settled on for the JK and TJ Wrangler.

This photography was then applied to the various display, email, social and site graphics requested by the various Marketing channels. Below is an example of a forum banner graphic with the copy provided by the Marketing team.

The promotion is currently running on the XT Holiday Gift Garage. I'll post more photos to show the apparel designs more in detail-stay tuned.

Holiday Gift Garage

I have been abnormally quiet on my blog posts as of late again, and I'll assure you once more that it is not due to a lack of work being made. Outside of work there have been lots of progress on my CB that I will have to share, however at work it has been booming with holiday graphics. 

The conception of this years Holiday Gift Garage began already in the beginning of August. In previous years we have used templates that focused on the grid, but overall became simple and standard. This year we wanted to design something more exciting, with a bit more of an editorial approach that played with hierarchy more than the previous design. 

I went to the drawing board, conscious of potential limitations with development and pulled inspiration from a variety of sites. Particularly I was intrigued by Burton and Swell and how they arranged their lifestyle imagery while still abiding to the grid. Below are the rough mocks I began with.

I worked back and forth with our Art Director and compared mocks. We tossed ideas around and essentially scrapped most of our initial ideas to really break away from the generic grid and what we have done in the past. We began looking at a variety of other retailers and the way they represent collections of products and I believe we landed somewhere very exciting. Of course all the while, we were very conscious of how our new layout would be translated from desktop to mobile versions. 

There was a lot of sketching and designing done before we had a finalized list of categories and products. While this was at times was a complicated guessing game, it did allow for pure creativity and innovation. Eventually we got all of the pieces we needed from our Merchandise team and the copy and ticket requests rolled in from the Marketing team. Once we had our approved ideas sketched out in Photoshop, we grouped up with the web development team to make sure our designs would be possible. With a few tweaks needed, we were set. 

Because this Holiday Gift Garage would span across our two stores: ExtremeTerrain.com and AmericanMuscle.com, we needed more hands to get it all completed. I essentially worked through ExtremeTerrain's layout from conception to completion. AmericanMuscle mirrored the layout and I managed to create the finalized template we would need for slicing and passed it on to another designer to crank out the generational imagery. Other aspects included hero banner composites which were primarily handled by the other designer and became our future catalog covers. Logos for each Holiday Gift Garage were tweaked and geared towards their respective brands. All in all this beast of a project required a ton of hands and elbow grease to get it to where it is now. Below are what the two garages look like that went live today.

A lot of work went into the conception part of this process, and I believe it really shows in the final product. At times designers get into a production mode and focus on efficiency rather than expanding upon creativity, so looking back, this was a refreshing method of design.

View the Gift Garages here: ExtremeTerrain.com & AmericanMuscle.com 

ExtremeTerrain - 4th of July

For July 4, 2015 at ExtremeTerrain we wanted to create a graphics package that was very Americana, yet fit the sophistication of the brand. This is the photo composite that ended up being the image for the holiday, and it's one I'm quite proud of.  The jeep with the couple was shot in our photo studio and the background is constructed out of about 3 different stock images. I worked in Photoshop to get the lighting and reflections realistic so that everything worked together.  Below is a TJ Wrangler but this was also created with a JK Wrangler for the ExtremeTerrain campaign.

Email: Mods That Weren't Under Your Tree

Last week I designed the email below for our ExtremeTerrain store. The two versions of the graphic below are a photo composite including a clipped out jeep from our in-house photo collection and three stock images for the background. With some reflection retouching, it came together pretty nicely. The typography and icon usage was inspired by the XT Gift Garage I had posted about earlier. This image was also reworked for an on-site banner for desktop and mobile.

The Gift Garage on ExtremeTerrain.com was another project I had this holiday season. I selected the variety of lifestyle images from our in-house photography collection to represent each category of products that Merchandising provided. The main graphic was also used as a catalog cover for our 2015 Holiday drop. The site "holidization" in the header and footer (tire tracks in snow and snowflakes) was also designed by me the prior year.

Back At It

I am well overdue for a blog post, my apologies. The goal is to better document my creative work while it happens, so this is the time to reboot the creative posts.  Below is a screenshot of the current 2010-2014 landing page of AmericanMuscle.com.  I have designed the Holiday Sale hero graphic (Photoshop composite using a KeyShot 3D render and a photo as the back plate), the Free 2016 Calendar graphic underneath that (photograph from our photography dept.), and while I did not create the Get a Free Gift graphic, I designed the t-shirt that is available for purchase here.