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.
For starters, Supercross is awesome. I'm surprised it took me so long to get into it, but I'm grateful I got into it when I did. Daytona was my first sx event, and now Saturday I added East Rutherford, NJ to the list too. I think attending Red Bud had to have ignited the initial interest, and it's only grown from there.
It's funny how some of the best times are created from last minute planning. I had been wanting to go to the NJ sx since it's been on the schedule this year, but wasn't sure how it would play out logistically. One day a friend offered to buy the tickets if I drove. Less than ten minutes later tickets were purchased. Saturday came and we made a full day out of it, departing at 8:30am.
One of the wisest things I did this past Saturday was taking my Polaroid camera to the race. I managed to capture some pretty awesome shots on film. Below are a few digital and print snapshots of the event. In case it's not apparent, I am also equally obsessed with panoramas as I am with Polaroids. Below are some shots from the event.
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.
I've got to be honest, I find that winter can be a huge drag. Here in PA it's mostly gray dreary and gray and cold and gray. I enjoy that hermit lifestyle of minimal movement and socialization. However, this season I've put it a bit more effort to move and also attempt to appreciate the winter grays. Below are some unedited iPhone snapshots from when my friend and I wandered around Green Lane Park on a very foggy winter day.
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.
Previously I had posted about the AM Calendar designs I had retouched (see post). To follow the successfully printed calendar, a promotional campaign was put together by the Marketing department that I got to execute. We ran a similar campaign last year so a lot of the design direction and elements were pulled from that successful creative. By using the lifestyle photography from within the printed calendar, the campaign was more easily put together and the focus was on typography and layout. Below is an example of an email aspot and bspot that ran during this calendar campaign.
There were additional social and on-site graphics that used similar layouts to the above. This campaign has since ended and a new similar campaign has begun using a similar concept. The messaging has changed slightly and where applicable, I chose a different image for each car generation. Below is another email a-spot and an on-site banner.
