Graphic Design
I have been familiar with the basic concepts of graphic design for some time, however, in the last few years I finally had the chance to do some commercial work in the field. I am capable of using the various software tools of the trade (see my résumé for details), including the ubiquitous Photoshop, and to add to the mix, I can also render 3D objects in various packages.
My longtime friend, Roy Mitton, was kind enough to think of me when he started working for the legendary Wrestling promotion, Calgary Stampede Wrestling. The challenges were many -poor and few photos of the talent, usually with very poor lighting, unreasonable deadlines, last minute "suggestions" from the powers that be, etc. However, we always manage to get out something on time, and this series of posters were described as being the "Best in the independent..." (independent wrestling leagues) by Stampede management.
I worked together with Roy to create a new approach for wrestling posters. Instead of the traditional advertising approach of featuring wrestlers you have never heard of on the posters, we tried something new. Our goal was to either tell a story, or just project the image that Stampede wrestling is "cool". For full details, see notes page.
More locally, I did a logo and business card for a company called Power Talk Communications in early 2005.
Bellow you will see some examples of my work. Each image is hyperlinked to a larger version of that image and accompanied by some information about that particular piece of work. Please remember that these low resolution JPEGs do not always reflect the exact effect created by the 300 dpi TIFF files that we used for the final products.
Stampede Wrestling Posters
Dory Funk Jr. is part of another legendary wrestling family, and held the NWA world title back when such things meant something. His current days are spent training, and being a scout for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Japan's biggest wrestling league, on par with the WWE in terms of money and size. His coming to Calgary was a very big deal to him (who referred to it as a "home coming" on his website), the wrestlers, and the fans. He took one of the posters back with him, and even displayed the image on his website, which made me feel very honoured.
The league had not recognized a tag-team championship for several years, but decided that the market was suitable to bring it back. So this became a featured event to be advertised. A cool, funky looking poster that indicated that multiple teams were contenders, and that the tag belts were at stake, was requested. This is the result.
Here we were just trying to be different. The Spider-Man movie release was imminent and as we grew up liking comics, comics were on the brain. My other friend, Shaun was kind enough to draw the characters for us. Shaun is an art school grad and published comic book artist. Please contact me if you would like to commission some work from him.
Stu Hart is the best the business has ever seen, and with a biography about him being released around his birthday, a special celebration had to be had. I would have liked a larger set of photos to draw from so that I could have gotten a better balance between the colour and black and white shots. However, Mr. Hart liked the poster so much he signed a free copy of his book to send me. I was, very, very honoured and thrilled to hear this. No matter what I, or anyone else, has to say about the appearance of that poster, that act, and those words, coming from that person, made it the best poster in the world to me. The cake, By the way, is a real cake I bought for my friend Trevor, with the text removed digitally.
What can I say? Wrestling promoters love fire, and things that look like they were devastated by something else. This was a general "Stampede is cool" poster, but it was asked that I put as many wrestlers on there as reasonable to associate them with the cool. I created the fire texture myself using some helpful hints I read. It must be nice to have third party plugins that do that sort of thing automatically for you. :-) A lot of people cite how much they like the sky. I would have liked to have extended it above to the top of the poster, but there were issues of possibly having to do another version that they could easily write over ceratin spaces on the poster without messing it up. At any rate, the client absolutely loved it.
Stampede Wrestling Collector Cards
As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations occurring this year, Stampede had me produce collector cards -small prints with pictures of particularly historic figures in the Stampede legacy. They also had the place and date for the next show written on the back. Here is an example of one. I would have liked to extend the background text throughout the picture, but there were consistency issues with the other cards to consider.
Stampede Wrestling Logos
Stampede had a few logos designed in-house over the last few years. After using the one seen in the above poster examples, they asked me to try out a new one. It looked less polished, but more appropriate for the business, if somewhat of a 1990's cliche. Here is what they sent me:
Naturally, I wanted to make it more... let us say, "advanced". I made some modifications and came up with this:
The original file was created in such a way as to allow the easy filling of the text with various colours, patterns, etc. A fire pattern was chosen to be used.
Power Talk Communications Logo
On a behalf of a sub-contractor, I created a new logo for a firm called Power Talk Communications. My new logo design showed a typical representation of a sound wave pushing away the letters of the logo. The slogan of the company is "Discovering the Power of Communications Through Your Own Voice" and and the client was very happy with how this was communicated via the final logo.
Below, a copy of the company's original logo is displayed.
Immediately below is my new version of the logo, and the one they currently use.
Power Talk Communications Business Card
In addition to a new logo, I was asked to create a new business card for Power Talk Communications. The client insisted on allot of information being present on the card. I handed over the original file with all layers intact so it could be easily manipulated latter. Although I would prefer the text at the bottom to be in blue, displayed below is the "base" version of the card.
