A couple years ago the graphic design studio where I work, Esser Design, launched a self-marketing campaign that conceptually conveyed the message: Stand out from the crowd. We aimed to illustrate the theme through a series of images that portrayed a grouping of items wherein one from the group stood out. The images are simple and are only accompanied by our tag line: “Make your mark.” We liked the first series of images so last year we did a second series. A couple months ago we needed to design an ad for the Phoenix Business Journal’s Book of Lists and we decided to do one more.

The following images represent the first two series of our marketing campaign.

 

 The images were used for a variety of collateral: ads, business cards, folders, note cards, etc.

 

When it came time to concept the image for this year’s ad placement the team decided to do something with super hero action figures. The basic idea was then handed off to me to flesh out. It took a matter of minutes to decide that vintage Super Powers would be ideal – not only because the figures had that kitchy vintage look but also because the line had a perfect character to represent the repetitive “dull” element.

Not being in possession of either the Super Powers Superman or Clark Kent figures, creative director Steve Esser graciously granted me an adequate eBay budget for prop procurement. Both eBay sellers rushed me the figures since we were getting close to the ad’s deadline. We opted not to buy three Clark Kents so I knew there would be some extra image manipulation involved. Once I had the figures, senior designer Nathan Joseph and I scouted out a good location in downtown Phoenix for the photo shoot. It was very windy the day I took the photos which proved to be pretty aggravating. I’d set up Superman and Clark, lay down flat on some sharp landscape rocks, focus the camera, and then –whoosh– the figures would blow down. I have a few cool shots of Superman in mid fall.

The original on-location photos are cool by themselves but in the end we had to do a fair amount of photo manipulation to get this shot to jive with all the other images in the series. Hence the super-simplified background in the final picture.

 

When I got to work this morning I was excited to see that the 2010 Phoenix Book of Lists had been delivered. The full page ad printed well and enjoys a great spot right next to the Graphic Design firm page. So long Metropolis!

 

 


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