NEVER TRUST A MAN NAMED "BOOBIE"

AS a child growing up in lovely South County | Affton area my family raised me on a healthy dose of three dog night & fleetwood mac. I remember drawing Mr. T in various forms with my dad who would be drawing birhtday posters for people at work/family members while listening to KSHE 95 (real rock radio). From these early memories I realized if I could combine my love for music with my love for art/design I would achieve my perfect job.

ABOUT two years ago I was asked to work on some artwork for a semi-local, semi-talented tough guy/mosh band from Springfield, IL. At the time I was really into working with bands and trying to help out a scene that I really had no reason being apart of, outside of being in a band that was loosely related. Regardless, Pound For Pound came to me with a loose concept that they described as "an album for our friends who we lost this past year." They wanted to use very gloomy/drab imagery with a color palette of reds, blacks and white.


WHEN Pound for Pound dropped off their album info, they mentioned that they only really needed a few "tweeks" to a layout they already had set up. When I opened the disc I found a nice window doc and a low res dpi image of what looked like a funeral procession. I quickly went to work trying to set up a look that would show the bands "gloomy" imagery while keeping a kind of "hand crafted" look.


THE first round of proofs went over pretty well. Sadly, the patience of the band quickly evaporated as "whenever you get it done" apparently means "we want it done 2 weeks ago." The project was never 100% completed, but these images show the layout and the feel of the album. Lesson learned? Springfield, IL is not only the worst city in the world...it also breeds the worst people in the world (sorry Coder).

MY HHX [in review]

HHX, for those who haven't talked to me in the past 2 months, is short for Hoop Hall Experience. Which for the first time in history, the Basketball hall of Fame is on tour. The hoop hall experience is where the story of basketball comes to life in over 22,000 square feet of "fun". With something for basketball lovers of all ages, from the heart-pounding "greatest moments" theater to the state-of-the-art interactive displays. Historic memorabilia like Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point jersey (which I wore), the original 24 second clock, and more. Clips of the greatest players, most memorable games and most inspiring coahces.

ANYWAY, the agency I work for asked me to put together some concepts for the commemrative program. In the piliminary stages of brainstorming the creative concept was a blending of "urban" with "white space" and "type is bad". Below is the only cover/back cover concept that I created, and the client bought into.


TIMELINE for this project ended up being super tight (as most projects eventually turn into) and the amount of hours given to create the 40 page book worked out to be about 1 hour per spread. With that in mind the concept (to save time and money) was to create a visually stimulating header page matched with a page of white space & images. Following each main chapter (for exmple "the modern game") there would be a two page spread of NBA artifacts to help relax the eye before beginning a new section.



ROUND 2 of revisions led to the introduction of lowering the target age group to be 9 to 90. The task went from adding an almost seek and find quality to a slick layout to try to make history fun for kids. The problem, outside of the basic "oh shit the entire direction has changed", is kids (in the age group of 9 - 14) are 99.9% more likely to pick up a tshirt or mini basketball than a book. After a few hours..er days of problem solving we came to the solution. By adding "true or false" and "b-ball trivia" sections to each main page the client felt that children would be learning more and be interested to flip through the book to at least get all of the questions.






THE final program went out almost 2.5 weeks late, over 150 hours of art directing, 25 hours of production and 2 nervous breeakdowns. Outside of the minor setbacks and occasional 7 day work weeks (for a whole month) of about 12 hour work days, I was very pleased with the final product. The Hoop Hall Experience is probably coming to a town near you and if your a fan of basketball you'd probably enjoy it, www.hoophallexperience.com