A new catalog has dropped for ExtremeTerrain.com this week and for this drop I have designed the cover of the JK and TJ/YJ buyer books. Below is the JK Cover.
This cover image is based off of a collection campaign Top Spring Upgrades. I chose a photo that was taken by an in-house photographer as the base and did a bit of retouching and compositing to make it work best for the catalog cover. Below is the original photo with a few Camera Raw adjustments.
I made sure to green up the photo a bit more to emphasize the spring elements. I also had to build out some of the background to have the image work better with the portrait orientation of the catalog cover.
The TJ/YJ version features a different photo of a Jeep on the trail that needed a bit more retouching and compositing to get that spring feeling. Below is the final front cover.
Below is the original photo with some minor Camera Raw adjustments applied.
And below is the full composited image used for the cover that has been built out. It is not a seamless composite since a lot of the right side of the image below was not shown on the cover and within the other graphics this campaign required.
For the TJ Jeep version I rendered out wheels as well to feature Mammoth wheels that are sold by ExtremeTerrain, rather than featuring wheels the company does not sell. They are very similar in style so it's not a very noticeable change from the original to the final image. Overall I'm pleased with how both covers turned out.
In addition to the covers, the JK catalog includes an insert. I designed a spread within this insert to feature the Top Spring Upgrade mods. Below is the spread featuring a blend of products and lifestyle photography.
This layout was meant to make a strong connection between the cover image and then also with the onsite experience.
The type treatment was also a focus for this project. I began experimenting with variations of the ExtremeTerrain font within Illustrator. My process is to carelessly play around with a font until something sticks. Below is what my Illustrator art board looked like while I experimented-a bit of organized chaos.
As you can see I used a stacked version for the print applications, but did have a use for a more horizontal orientation within email and onsite graphics. Below is a closer look at the final type treatment I used in the insert design as well as on the catalog cover.
March has generally been a busier month with some traveling and a heavier workload. This past week I've managed to take on a side project to get a pencil back in my hand. It's easy for me to get caught up in the digital world and designing on the computer, so I really value breaks that involve paper and pencil.
A friend came to me asking for a drawing project of two crowns. I was tasked with recreating each crown and adding some design elements to them. Initially both were to get a swirl design added, however, there was a need to make one of the crowns more masculine. I began by sketching out each crown on a 5"x7" piece of Rives BFK. From there I used microns to perfect the outlines. I cleaned up the sketch marks I initially had and then went in to do shading and detailing with various graphite pencils. With that looking well I added the extra design elements. To the queen crown I kept the swirls per request. The king crown provided a bit of a design challenge, but I ended up sketching several options where the client chose one he liked the best. I completed that with the same micron then graphite process to get the final drawings. Below is an animated gif of the progress made with the queen drawing.
Throughout the process I filmed the progress of each drawing with my GoPro Hero 5 Session. I've been experimenting with the time lapse settings and believe I have found the sweet spot. Stay tuned for a future post of time lapse footage. Below are the drawings along with some detail shots.
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.
ExtremeTerrain.com is having a $6,000 Custom Wrangler Build Giveaway and I designed the creative. The initial design direction was a Wrangler off-roading in the mud. I sifted through our in-house lifestyle photography and found some more recent photos of a Jeep we have not used much yet in our XT graphics. There were various shots of this Wrangler in the mud, however it didn't include very much greenery in the images. Since this sweeps is running March through April, I decided to retouch the photos and composite in some leaves.
The initial photo had some foreground elements, mostly sticks, but this inspired me to add a brand with leaves. I used a Gaussian blur filter on a stock branch photo to make it look like it's in the foreground and out of focus.
I also added some subtle green grass and leaves to the background. From there I placed this main image in various email and on-site templates and added copy. Below is an email a-spot and on-site banner showing the slightly different copy elements and design.
The social team requested several alt images, and I took the same approach as I did with the original image. I found two other angles of the same Wrangler and added touches of green throughout the scene. Below is one of the alts.
Check out ExtremeTerrain.com for the latest sweepstakes and aftermarket Jeep Wrangler products.
First and foremost, GoPro's are awesome. I've been meaning to capture the progress of my drawings and paintings and finally purchased a GoPro to do so. I used the time lapse feature and began to mess with the speed settings. While this one is a little more choppy than I was initially going for, it certainly does the job. This drawing took about 30 minutes, and I did speed it up in post at 200%. The drawing is graphite pencil on Rives BFK.
I've had Milwaukee, WI on my travel bucket list for a few years now, and an opportunity came up to hitch a ride this past weekend that I could not resist. Riders Dan Bromley & Jeremy Orr were heading in a race van to the Flat Out Friday race happening during the Mama Tried Motorcycle Show, and they picked me up on the way last Thursday morning. We drove all day, making it to Wisconsin that night after making some stops along the way.
We stayed with Dan's legendary tuner Bill Werner in Wisconsin and headed to the track Friday morning. We started to pit outside, the sun was shining and it was 50+ degrees in Milwaukee in February, who would have thought.
Eventually we moved inside and were set up for the day. Eventually more and more riders and people showed up to the event. Racing had begun and the crowd started filing in.
While there was big money tossed in for the Charlotte Kainz Memorial Race that the pro's would compete in, the main event was the show put on by the Hooligans. I have to say my favorite Hooligan rider was Carey Hart, hands down. I had to have a fan girl moment and get my photo with him in the pits, too, of course.
The pro race shook out to be a good one with Jared Mees dominating the field. Jake Mataya road the #35L bike and surely did it justice. Bronson Bauman and Dan Bromley were scored 3rd and 4th. As usual it was great to see familiar faces of the race family from around the country. It's been a long off-season, but Daytona is right around the corner, and this trip to Milwaukee helped break up the racing drought.
The road home was as long as the trip out there, but I was so stoked to have been able to make the trip. It was a short one, and I'll have to go back sometime to explore the city a bit more and check out the Harley Museum. Until next time!
