Firebird Raceway, Idaho commissioned an illustration of the famous Raymond Beadle Blue Max Ford Mustang funny car in its 1976 guise/paint scheme. The illustration would be transferred to nostalgic looking 12x17” metal signs that they offer for sale through their souvenir gift shop.

Night Fire 500 is the name of an annual drag racing event that Firebird Raceway has been hosting since the 1970’s. The idea is to have the sign conjure up memories of posters of the early editions - in this case the 1976 event that had this actual funny car competing at their track (and finishing runner-up).

Here are reference shots as supplied by Firebird; a scanned black and white shot of the car at a Seattle track and a snap shot of a vintage Firebird ticket from 1976 for lettering styling cues. They also included a photograph from 1976 of the car at Firebird Raceway but the quality of that shot was too poor to work from.

Because vector drawing in Adobe Illustrator is such an exact and precise process, there's no option of cutting corners or "winging" it; With vector work, every last minute detail needs to be re-created and vectorized or it won't look good.

It is especially problematic with race cars like this because of the extensive use of detailed graphics and painted signage: I end up spending a crazy amount of time on doing additional research, trying to find good vintage photographs and close-up shots and making sure everything looks period correct. Not to mention actually re-creating signage and decals and vectorizing everything in Adobe Illustrator.

Here is a screen grab of my Blue Max medal after vector work.

And here is the rest of my 1976 Blue Max funny car lettering.

Luckily, I found some good color photographs from 1976 through Google, so I knew what the colors should look like. Here’s my finished car in Illustrator in preview mode and in outline mode; Took a couple of days to draw up!

This is the completed layout after dropping in the lettering. Remember we’re trying to emulate a mid-1970’s poster look with this!

Here’s a digital mock-up of what I thought the final metal sign should look like with a mild aging overlay.

The actual signs came out a little different because the sign company used a much stronger aging overlay; this is the complimentary copy that Firebird Raceway sent me. Can’t say I’m too happy with the “dirty” look  of the overlay that the sign company decided on but that happened outside my control.

Three earlier designs in an upright layout and in a limited palette of only 3 colors that Firebird commissioned from me in previous years.

Close-up of the sign for 1974 with the Jerry Ruth - Competition Specialties Mustang.

Thank you for visiting! See more nostalgia drag racing artwork on www.dutchcouragegraffix.com