It's that time already-where the graphics department actively works on creative for the upcoming Mustang Show. A lot of the creative I am working on including the program and apparel items that I am unable to share until the show, however, there are a few web items I've worked on that are currently live.
One of the new additions for this year is an #AM2017 Mustang Show landing page. This page is a hub of all things show-related including a teaser video, how to register for the show, special events info, all about the show, FAQs and sponsors. The marketing efforts have greatly increased this year, and it has been proving to be quite effective in that registration sign-ups are skyrocketing!
This landing page design is based off the original Gift Garage/Seasonal Collection landing page I had worked with the Art Director on the end of last year. The web team was able to develop a template that was flexible and could be used for this page. After a couple planning meetings, we got all of the design, image assets and copy in place. Below is a screenshot of this page.
At the bottom of the landing page, underneath the sponsors list is another new graphic for this year. This Save Your Spot graphic that pushes to the Registration page is at this location on all pages of the AmericanMuscle.com site. I am curious to hear how the data rolls in, to see which efforts are performing the best, but overall it's becoming a success already. Stay tuned for more graphics to come over the next three months.
Each time the AmericanMuscle Customer Spotlight articles come around, the goal is to try something new design-wise and see if it sticks. Some redesigns go better than others, and some make it to print. I was excited about this design I came up with and how easy it was to execute and work with this content.
I look at a variety of retail sites ranging from motorsports, action sports, fitness, surfing, footwear and automotive brands to pull inspiration from. This specific design was pulled from a Roxy homepage ad. Below are the designs for the 2015-2017 and 2010-2014 AmericanMuscle Customer Spotlights for the May catalog drop that landed in mailboxes today. Following is the original inspiration image I pulled from.
I worked on the AmericanMuscle April Sale graphics that are currently online. The copy "unleash your Mustang" was my inspiration in choosing photos of cars on the track from our previous car shows. Several onsite, email and social graphics were created for this sale.
Below are the various photos I used to cover all of the AmericanMuscle Mustang generations.
We've added a new part to some of our print catalogs that features fresh, new seasonal products in a new visual way. The marketing team strategize with the merchandising team to select products that customers are most likely wanting at the time the catalog shows up in their mailbox. For March, the focus included wheel mods and exhaust mods based on previous data. Four pages of this new catalog insert would feature those two categories. For additional pages feature the newest products that have just been released.
For this March catalog, I designed the seasonal content for AmericanMuscle's 2015-2017, 2010-2014, and 2005-2009 publications. The design direction was to focus on new lifestyle imagery of the products so that this content section looks unique to all other pages in the book. To accomplish this, a lot of time was put into sifting through in-house photography and customer submitted product shots. While it took more time than a normal spread, in the end it came together quite nicely.
Below is the 2015-2017 Seasonal Content:
While the design is mostly photography-driven, there were some typographical elements I got to include such as the Wheels messaging, the axle-back vs. cat-back banner and the spring messaging that introduces the new products for March. A few additional product image thumbnails were also added to the layout to better explain and/or display the products.
Below is the 2010-2014 spreads:
Below is the 2005-2009 seasonal content:
All inserts took on a very similar layout with the products and photography varying. The content as a whole has a unique look to it when comparing it to our normal product-heavy catalog pages. Hopefully this new look gets the customers inside the books even more to discover new mods for their Mustangs.
A new year means more new catalogs! The 2017 AmericanMuscle catalogs should be hitting mailboxes today featuring new content. This drop I designed the Customer Spotlights once again, this time for three different books. Below are the new Customer Spotlight editorial pieces for 2015-2017, 2010-2014 and 2005-2009 Mustangs.
AmericanMuscle ran another free gift campaign this month where the customer could choose one of eight apparel items if they spent over the set threshold ($150). The graphic designers meet up to discuss the monthly campaigns and bring inspiration to the table. I look at a lot of different sites for inspiration including Rip Curl, Backcountry, The Fasthouse, Fox Racing, Burton, Under Armour, Icon, FMF Exhaust and Roxy to name a few. Pretty much any sort of variety of motorsports, action sports or outdoors-related business are fair game to pull inspiration. With this being an apparel project, I no doubt focused a lot of Fox Racing's web banners and email graphics. I was really drawn to the image below that Fox used as a homepage banner on their site:
I really liked the split imagery, The Fasthouse uses this method a lot as well with their web banners throughout their site. With this project I was finally able to execute this look.
One of our challenges that the designers face is showing giveaway items creatively while also showing the vehicle. For example, this apparel promo would perform best, based on previous testing, with a Mustang also in the creative. With that said, in the past we've incorporated models and Mustangs in shots, and they just haven't performed as great as one would predict. I believed this Fox example would prove to be the most successful blend of showing the apparel and also showing a lifestyle of a mustang. My team agreed, as did the Marketing department, and soon enough the concept was approved.
The next step was to submit a photography request so they could order the eight apparel items for a custom shoot. I provided this example and some additional apparel examples of things I was looking for. Below are the examples I included for the shoot:
The top image is what I envisioned for the on-site graphics. The second image was what another designer brought to our monthly inspirational meeting. I planned to use an image similar to this with tools for the email creative. The goal with the email was to be more mysterious and have the customer guessing what the "free gift" could possibly be. The in-house photographer took a variety of shots based on these examples. The lifestyle portion of the web banner concept would just be pulling from our current in-house photography library on our server.
Throughout the process there were some copy adjustments, but overall the concept was really well received. Below is one of the on-site desktop graphics featuring imagery very similar to the initial concept proposed:
For email, we also ended up going with the split design and ran a copy A/B test. I used a more vague photo of the apparel including the tools. Below are the A/B versions of an email a-spot:
I was really happy with the end result of this project. It's interesting to see how similar the initial concept is with the final creative, yet has its own feel. Below are the rest of the generational lifestyles. This project included desktop and mobile site graphics as well as email a-spot and b-spots.
Part of my on-going duties is to maintain and update house brand websites. The Raxiom brand continues to expand as more products are created for various vehicles including Mustang, F-150 and Wrangler. As new products are added, I like to continue to add them to the Featured Products section of Raxiom.com. This month I added ten new products to the top of the featured section and worked with the web development team to execute the additions.
Updates for this section are pretty simple, as I pull the assets, arrange them in the grid and slice them up. I also provide the sort category (vehicle type), product name and the type of Raxiom product (ie: Performance Lighting) that appears on hover. The sort function is what I think is the highlight of this grid of products, as you can see different parts for different vehicles and the boxes rearrange accordingly. This site is responsive and so is that functionality. Check it out here: Raxiom.com/featured.
Every now and then a designer will do a project that they're happy with, but for various reasons it may be replaced with something else. That's the case with this AmericanMuscle January Sale creative I made last month. I went in with a concept of a rolling car in an cold winter scene. Below is the inspirational image I found in a Google search.
With the concept approved, I searched through various stock backgrounds to get a similar feel. When I found the image below I flipped the orientation, removed some distracting elements, adjusted the color and warmth of the photo and then added motion blur.
The above wasn't the final back plate I used, but it was enough to get started on the renders. I first rendered the 2015 Mustang and made it a dark gray to keep the overall icy feel that was in the inspirational image. I did some compositing with the render to get everything to fit in the scene. From there I added the 2015 image into the various on site and email templates. What I found was most of the winter background ended up getting cropped out due to the orientation of the templates. Below is an on site web banner.
I do feel the image is more impactful with more mountains and sky showing, however, the wintry feel was still very much there in the crop. I proceeded with the other car generations and composites to complete the full package. For graphics that needed copy, I kept it simple. Below are some generational web banners with the simplistic copy.
I was happy with the final graphics for this project. Unfortunately it needed to be replaced with alternative creative, but sometimes that's how it goes in the design world. On to the next!
