About two months ago our Art Director handed over a desktop mock of the future Turn5, Inc. site that included a total rebrand including a fresh modern logo and new color palette. From there I converted the desktop mock into a mobile mock and got to work with the development team to make the mocks come to life. After leading a few photo shoots, retouching images, rounding up numerous blocks of copy and testing the various stages of development, today was finally launch day. The brand new www.turn5.com site is responsive and showcases the professional yet casual environment my place of employment provides. While our brands our within the automotive retail industry, Turn5, Inc. provides an excellent working environment for professionals. If you are job hunting, definitely check out our career opportunities.
This site offered a great opportunity for project management experience as I worked with the various departments to pull the entire site together. One of my favorite parts that I found most successful was working with our in-house photographer to get shots of employees working throughout our various buildings and departments. Adding those to candid shots from several events and employee testimonials in a collage within the Our Culture section is one of the most visually interesting aspects to the new site. I am also quite grateful for the video that can be viewed on desktop applications. The video team did a great job compiling footage of the various departments that make up Turn5. All together it is a great representation of the hard work and fun that goes into keeping Turn5 a thriving company. Below is a screenshot of the desktop layout, but be sure to check www.turn5.com out for yourself.
AIR is putting on an event the Friday before the Oklahoma City Mile that I am happily apart of. Of course that also includes designing flyers and other advertising materials to get this show on the road! I took the photograph at the Lonestar Half Mile race in Austin. Above is the initial event flyer, stay tuned for more designs regarding this and other AIR events. See the Facebook event for more information if you'd like to join in on the fun!
One Nation is an AmericanMuscle t-shirt design I created recently and is now available online for purchase at: AmericanMuscle.com. This design is a 4-color screen print on a poly/cotton sand colored shirt. The web photography was done in-house.
I set out to paint several 8x10 canvases this weekend with bold, vibrant roses. I wanted to paint more of my traditional styled roses. While I was sketching the rose in white paint over a bright pink canvas, I began to become intrigued with the sketched line work. I sketched in white first, then began to outline in black and topped it off with some white splatter from a toothbrush. I let that dry and as it did new ideas bounced in my head. I decided to make this painting unique from my traditional drawings that involve smooth shading from white to black within defined line work. I decided to add a touch more sketch lines in white and called it complete. Below is an animated gif and the final image of the painting. I will have this one and several others for sale in two weeks.
I thought it might make for an interesting post to break down one of my recent photo composites I have done. About four years ago when I began working at Turn5 I had zero compositing skills. Since then I have created quite a few composites using a variety of resources including photography, stock imagery, 3D renders and various Photoshop tools and techniques. I've posted the final versions of this specific AmericanMuscle F-150 campaign before, however, here's how it all came to life, more or less.
The top image was the initial rough concept to represent spring mods. This is a photo with a few Camera Raw adjustments that was taken by our in-house photography team. One of the first edits I made to this image in order to make it feel very seasonal, was to remove the one boat with the tarp. I also tidied up the environment to remove any distracting pieces.
Now that the majority of the environment was cleaned up and feeling seasonal, my next step was to focus on the F-150. Since AmericanMuscle is an aftermarket automotive business, it would make sense that the truck be a bit more modded than when it was photographed. Our vehicles tend to transform over time with mods and at times they appear less modded than others. When a vehicle appears to be less modded, it doesn't hurt to add a few in post that transform the entire look of the vehicle.
Above you can see the addition of the upper and lower grille on the 2015 F-150. Essentially, I could call this composite complete and begin placing it in the variety of web, email and display templates along with the campaign copy, however I decided to take it a step further below with some foreground elements.
One of the nicest additions one could make to a photo composite is foreground elements that fit within the depth of field with the photograph. I chose to add some greenery to the bottom left of this image that matched the out of focus boat. These blurred out blades of grass overlap the front tire of the F-150 to make the overall image more convincing (especially for when I show you the next F-150 year that was not shot in camera). I personally thought more green would only help the overall concept of spring for this campaign.
Finally, this 2015 image is ready to be placed in the variety of templates, however the project is not complete until the image is made generationally. Currently AmericanMuscle sells products for 2015-2016 F-150s and also 2009-2014 F-150s. Those products represent two very distinct body styles that we refer to as generations. So in order to complete this project, I first began to remove the 2015 that was in camera to get a nice clean backplate.
Above is the cleaned up background. There are definitely some highly visible imperfections that reveal I used the clone/stamp tool to copy and paste elements from the image. With this I wasn't concerned with making it perfect since I knew the new F-150 would cover up those imperfections. The next task was to find a different in-house photograph of a 2011 F-150 at a similar angle that would fit my scene.
Not only is a close angle important when compositing, it is crucial to use images with similar lighting and environments. The 2011 F-150 above had similar elements and as you can see is also outside on gravel, surrounded by trees. After retouching the truck and clipping it out, it fit pretty nicely in the scene.
After retouching the truck and clipping it out, it fit pretty nicely in the scene above. I made sure to take the shadow from the original image and tweaked it slightly so it lined up well with the new 2011 F-150.
Above shows the upper and lower grille mods that I also added to this truck to transform it and make it look more unique than other modded trucks we have shown in our previous campaigns.
Finally, I use the same layer that includes the foreground grass in this composite as I had in the 2015 version to make it a complete and finalized image to use for the spring campaign. Compared to where we started with the original 2015 photograph, I think both vehicles turned out well visually and fit the campaign direction nicely.
Take a sneak peek into my process when tossing a catalog together:
These are technically three different catalog books but they are essentially the progression of how I handle each one individually within InDesign. Once products are selected from our Merchandising team, I make item names and charts per spread. Second I grid out the images, keeping in mind the general ratio of each product that I've come to learn over the years. Lastly, I pull the assets and pop the photos into the grid while adding lifestyle imagery and other design elements. I've found this process to be fairly efficient and visually organized. Oh the power of the grid!
