THE BRIEF
Wilson Dow’s internal marketing team approached me with an exciting opportunity. They recently won some awards and wanted to do a little humble bragging. On top of this Wilson Dow had also given their brand a fresh new look. I sat down with the marketing team to talk through potential designs and figure out the “why” behind the posters.
They communicated that the posters were to serve as inspiration to employees of what we as a team are capable of. Below are examples that were used as inspiration for the poster design and how they planned on hanging and showcasing the final outcome.
Example of a Frame Solution
Original Art by: Lesha Limonov
Original Art by: Graham Fisher
Original Art by: James Joyce
THE CHALLENGE
Wilson Dow underwent a massive overhaul of their brand guidelines. Along with that came new fonts, color palettes, and patterns. These were all at my disposal and needed to be taken into careful consideration while creating the posters. The challenge was not that the new guidelines were strict or too ridged, but the fact that I had free range to let my creativity explore so many different options. The creative directors were also likeminded and wanted to push the Wilson Dow brand as far as it could go while remaining authentic.
I worked through any and all types of options I could think of before beginning to narrow down on the direction.
THE PROCESS
Below are rough examples of various directions I took with all of the information I had gathered. The creative team and I worked very closely and left no stone unturned. This stage took a lot of ideation and experimenting. I played with color combinations and tried to push the copy as far as they would allow, while still maintaining readability.
THE SOLUTION
Ultimately, we settled on the options below. The creative directors really enjoyed the idea of 3D text, which took inspiration from James Joyces' print. Instead of using a halftone effect like Joyce, I pushed the idea a bit further by incorporating additional colors from Wilson Dow’s color palette.
For the second poster, we decided to keep the typography a bit more simple and bring interest to the words that mattered most. I used the pattern as a framing device since it wouldn’t pull too much attention from the text itself.
