Labels for beers that don’t exist, but should. In the immortal words of one Homer Simpson, “Beer good.”
archive for the ‘work’ category
Robots & Space: They Just Go Together
May 4th, 2010Here’s an illustration I just did for the Help/Systems homepage:
Robot: The Video Game
May 1st, 2010Here is a screenshot from my upcoming Flash game “Batch Job Scheduler” starring the Help/Systems mascot.
Robot running in all his 8-bit glory.
Ellingson Classic Cars Redesign
May 1st, 2010For the Ellingson Classic Cars website I’m currently redesigning, I’m going for a 50’s-60’s retro feel, appealing to the Baby-Boomer customer base.
Here are a few illustrations of the website’s mascot, a typical “spokes-cartoon” that was popular in advertising at that time.
This would go at the bottom of every car listing page.
This one would go on the homepage header.
I would use this one on the 404 page.
hey, remember the 80’s sci-fi megacorporations?
April 27th, 2010Holy frak. Google can now buy electricity. It seems we’re entering the age of the megacorporation, those ubiquitous 80’s sci-fi movie tropes that seemed to be behind everything. But before we find ourselves in a world where every facet of our lives is controlled by a giant faceless corporation, lets give these old dusty superconglomerates a shot at their former glory, with a long overdue rebrand and retcon.
Where does one start? Well, why not with another present day corporatocracy such as Walmart. As pointed out by Bill Marsh in an article for the New York Times, they recently redesigned their logo and brand identity, thereby “softening the stern voice of corporate authority to something more like an informal chat.” Yikes.
Omni Consumer Products, from the Robocop franchise, started out making accessories for the iPod. The use of Myriad is a subtle way of better associating themselves to Apple, so as to trick the consumer into thinking they are buying actual Apple products. It must have worked, because in the very near future, after gambling in markets traditionally regarded as non-profit (such as hospitals, prisons, and space exploration) OCP owns half of Detroit Rock City and is hawking such products as a cyborg cop, the controversial ED-209, and the 6000 SUX. I’d buy that for a dollar!
Alternate History Travel Posters
April 19th, 2010
¡SOLO UNA NOCHE!
March 22nd, 2010I thought I would share a couple of screenprints I’ve been working on. All I gotta to do now is, you know, learn how to screenprint….
as/400 burger!!!!!!!1
November 4th, 2009Filed under weird stuff I’ve done at Help/Systems is this illustration I did today for a blog post on how the IBM AS/400 data server “is a standard in the computing world, sort of like a hamburger in the world of American food.” The idea at first was to just Fotoshop a picture of one of these servers in between two buns, but the image is so crazy, it really had to be an illustration.
Still looks better than English food. The post can be seen here: IBM Power Systems: Serving Millions of Satisfied Customers
my tribute to George Ham
March 18th, 2009A few months ago, I did an ad for SEQUEL, one of our software products. With a blank canvas to work with, and the vague concept of evoking a sense of speed (hence the headline “Fast, effective business planning”) I did something I’d been wanting to do for a while: a racing poster by George Ham. I’ve been a fan for a long time, enjoying his portrayals of speed, danger, and far-off locales. My ad is really closer to his later work from the 70’s, with the crisper, less painterly lines, but for me, it’s really a salute to his entire catalog.
The guy doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. With all the money Posters.com makes off of him, he should for sure have one.
superusers assemble!
December 19th, 2008Greetings, true believers! (Good lord I hope that isn’t copyrighted) For a few months Help/Systems had been pushing the concept of the “Superuser,” which is a user role for one of our products, SEQUEL ViewPoint. We already had a magazine ad establishing the superhero team concept, each hero representing different things you could do with ViewPoint. The time was right to take the concept further. In my mind, there was only one direction to go, and that direction was the legendary Avengers #4.
With the help of local illustrator Betsy Leplatt, I set out to make Stan Lee and Jack Kirby proud. After all, what good are iconic comic covers if they can’t be parodied with B2B direct mail pieces? Betsy drew the characters in pitch-perfect Kirby style, and I layed it all out and did a lot of hand-lettering, including the actual “SuperUsers” title and the “Do you have what it takes…” sub-head.
Even the “Comics Code” stamp in the top right corner is parodied, reading “Approved for the IBM System i” (the system ViewPoint runs on) instead. A lot of love went into this, and I really hope our customers appreciated it.
who’s honoring me now?
October 29th, 2008How is genius recognized? How do we measure the immeasurable contributions to society? That question was answered when my Robot/ALERT mailer took a statue at the 2008 Printimage Excellence Awards, which I think is totally like the Oscars of print award shows. In fact, I think they should call it the “Printys” or something with an “e” sound at the end.
Anyway, the award was actually presented to the shop that printed it, The MPX Group. They won 2nd place in the category of Foil Stamping, Die Cutting, Embossing. OK, its not like Best Picture, but its at least Best Supporting Actor. And it would be during the televised broadcast, not the crappy, token taped portion, and maybe presented by somebody like Paul Giamatti.