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Adventures in ITS

Graphic Design, Storytelling, Advertising

Adventures in ITS
2011-2012 Marketing Campaign
This campaign represents a marked departure from the style of past Econolite Group campaigns. I worked on the team that created the initial idea, and created the concept art and helped develop the "pitch" presentation our team made to upper management. I have created the vast majority of the art for this campaign, and have done all of the concept, design, and layout work myself. I drew the characters from scratch, and did all of the coloration/shading, as well as created any logos necessary.

The cityscape backgrounds are not mine, with a few noted exceptions. They are vintage ad art the company used in the 1960s, found buried under boxes in the company warehouse. The damaged drawings were brought to me, and I restored them digitally to their original state, and have been using them throughout this campaign as a nod to the company's history.

Working alongside our staff writer, I have helped in writing and/or editing the text used throughout. We hired an outside firm to complete the actual video animations, using the fully designed, layered art files I provided to them, along with my storyboards and direction. While in a time crunch on one phase of the project, I also worked with a contractor to create vector art from two of my character sketches, but was not wholly satisfied with the result--I reworked this art significantly, but pieces of it do remain.
This is the first ad in the campaign, which ran beginning in the January/February publications, through the end of April. I used imagery I had created for the video to create a comic book cover-feeling ad. It was request that some of the "exposition" from the video be added in as well, which became the panel frames above the title marquee.
In one publication, this page ran as a consecutive full page ad to the previous, which also uses panels initially created for the video.
An electronic ad that ran in a trade publication's e-newsletter, in conjunction with the first two ads of the series.
Ad #3 in the series, used to feature the products DCMS.2 and Autoscope Encore. Once again, I used the vintage art for most of the setting, but in panel 7 had to sketch a view from the signal head down to the street on my own.
An electronic ad that ran in a trade publication's e-newsletter, in conjunction with the corresponding ad in the series.
Ad #4 in the series, featuring the Centracs Advanced Transportation Management System. In this ad, I drew all of the interior settings myself, and only used the vintage city drawings for the outdoor views.
Ad #5 in the series, featuring the Safetran line of traffic cabinets and controllers. For this ad, the company requested that the format be changed away from telling a linear story, as in the previous ads, which resulted in this quadrant-style layout, with no appearance by the series villain.

Also, while the general settings are the vintage drawings, I drew and inserted the relevant equipment (the cabinets), as well as the tree in the final panel.
An electronic ad that ran in a trade publication's e-newsletter, in conjunction with the corresponding ad in the series.
These four sets of graphics are used at national trade shows, as "sails" mounted to kiosk poles.
Regional trade show graphics printed as pull-out banner stands.
The pages/spreads above were printed and bound into a mini "comic book," used as collateral and distributed to both existing customers and potential customers at various trade shows.