Thursday, July 23, 2009

What was this guy smokin?


I love signs — they inform us, direct us, alert us, and many times simply entertain us, as in this case. I shot this several years ago and came across the image recently. It's always been one of my favorites, primarily because of the story behind it.

After I talked to the owner about this sign, he acknowledged the misspelling and told me that they sent the sign painter back to redo the sign because the first sign that was delivered was spelled “NO SMOKIN” (which generally would fly here in the South). He explained to the sign painter that it needed a G on the end to be correct. So the painter went back to his shop and delivered a brand new sign, with a great-looking G on the end, with even better letterspacing than before. Unfortunately, not enough attention paid to the entire word. Which leaves me to wonder how many times do we become so focused or worried on solving a small issue or problem, and still end up missing the big picture?

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Monday, July 13, 2009

Vaughn's BBQ Poster

Poster and handout cards for Vaughn's Barbeque, a recipe that has been in the Vaughn family since 1934. The sauce offers a rich sweet and sour flavor, and lends itself to many possibilities — pork, beef, chicken, shrimp, and more. For an upcoming food trade show, we created a poster and different cards for each type of meat, which spoke directly to the versatility of the sauce. We substituted the word meat with the illustrations, and played up the existing tagline, “Pleasuring Meat Since 1934”. Check out this sauce at www.vaughnsbbq.com.

Vaughn's Handout Detail

Vaughn's Promo Cards

Black Bottom Biscuits CD “Ain't No Kinda Blue”





I recently designed the CD package for the Black Bottom Biscuits, a local country/bluegrass band based here in Columbia. Album is "Ain't No Kinda Blue", and George Fulton did an awesome job interpreting that title for the cover shot.

Old family recipe books from the ’40s and ’50s provided some great inspiration for the interior and influenced much of the interior booklet design, complete with hand-written recipes, aged paper textures and color palette.

Check out the Biscuits at http://www.blackbottombiscuits.com

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Poster design for the Black Bottom Biscuits. This was for their performance in West Columbia for "The Rhythm on the River" series.