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Sometimes in the commercial art field we put a lot of heart and soul into a project that just never quite makes it to fruition. I used to ride bikes with the guy who handles swag production for Carlos Santana and one day he invited me to submit an idea for an upcoming Santana album release. The art would be used for the CD cover, promotional posters, online promotions, t-shirts and various other uses. A small fee was all I was guaranteed but, hey, who wouldn't want to be the artist for Santana's next release?! I didn't get chosen but Dan did say Carlos (who chooses all his own graphics) looked long and hard at my submission. I take that as a win.
Agency: Private Eye Studios, Nashville, TN — One of my earlier designs, I produced this as an airbrush illustration for a collection of the Oak Ridge Boys early gospel recordings. The original art was chosen for the The One Club's prestigious "One Show" in New York and was one of only 30 works chosen for a travelling show of originals to Japan.
Agency: Private Eye Studios, Nashville, TN — There are those times, though, when you win and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to design and illustrate this cover for the Charlie Daniels Band and their "Decade of Hits" collection. The project came to me as a result of the cover I had done for The Oak Ridge Boys "Gospel Express" and I found out from the studio owner that Charlie is a big fan of raccoons and irises...so...I used the two as the design theme for this simulated tooled leather cover with the inlaid ceramic and metal lettering. Charlie loved the cover and I loved doing it for him!
This game start-up is based in Dandridge, Tennessee, and the founders had a great idea - take the traditional bean bag toss game and make it a whole lot more fun with a set of themed cards, a game board for keeping score and a very clever set of cards that determines what your tosses can earn you or take away from your opponent. Play them once and you'll be hooked. Traditional bean bag toss will never be the same! I designed and produced the logo, all of the artwork for the game cards and boards as well as the package designs. There's more on these in the Other Stuff section of this site.
Agency: Ann McDonald Advertising, Berkeley, CA — With Ann's guidance I created this energetic collage design for the packaging of Vital POS Partner Point of Sale software.
Agency: Enterprise/IG, San Francisco, CA — I produced the package artwork for Nature Made Cal Burst as well as the "opened packages" art pictured, the image work for Armor All Leather Care, and both the label art and the illustrated ad for Clorox Liquid Plumr Foaming Pipe Snake.
Agency: Enterprise/IG, San Francisco — I've included this section on Ajax brand cleaners to demonstrate a visual step-by-step process that I have gone through helping to develop presentation materials for the Colgate-Palmolive people. As a large client there is an expectation of very "finished" looking mock-ups for each step as the process moves forward. Above you can see some of my very tight comp art for our original direction of a stylized realistic look for their kitchen, shower and glass cleaning products.
Here are steps to a glass cleaner final design...
...and here are several composites for the bathroom cleaner label including a couple of flower scented variants. These with their type were printed out and attached to the actual product bottles for review.
Pictured here are several of my composites for the kitchen cleaner, shower cleaner and a couple for the all purpose cleaner.