SALUTATIONS!!! Sorry we haven’t spoke in a while, been crazy busy putting together the music section and a few other bits for issue 13 of SuperSuper, which will hopefully go to print either today or tomorrow (fingers crossed). I’ll upload some of those pages within the next few weeks for your viewing pleasure, after I survive the chaos that is London Fashion Week.
Anyway I have an interesting story to share, which involves yours truly and a major sporting label.
While we were putting this issue together in August my boss and mentor approached me about doing some basic mock-ups for a comissioned advertorial that Adidas wanted to run in the issue. Basically we were given free range to come up with a concept that promoted their autumn/winter range. My boss sat me down and pitched a concept to me about creating an Adidas inspired world that was quite bright and colourful and had a children’s animation type of theme, in which we would cut out the models and place them into this bright fun filled landscape. I went away done some research, a few rough sketches and really threw myself into the project. The advertorial would run across 3 double page spreads so I came up with the notion of breaking each page up into different times of the day in our so called Adidas World: sunrise, noon and a night time setting.
I pitched my idea to my boss and presented him with these illustrations and i’m proud to say he loved them, as well as everyone else on the SuperSuper team. It was a real special moment for me being this new-bee on the mag and being presented with an opportunity like this on my first issue, not to mention having everyone from the team gathered around my computer commenting on and supporting my work.
The next stage was to shoot the models, get the high-res images then cut them out and place them on to my backgrounds.
With the exception of photography and product credits, this is pretty much how the advertorial would have run. We dropped these pages into the rest of the magazine layout and we were all really pleased with the outcome.
HOWEVER!! Once we sent the proofs off to Adidas to mine and everyone else’s complete and utter dismay, their product manger was not as receptive about the feature. Although they had given us free-range creatively they did not like the theme and the overuse of their logo, they even disliked the look of one of the models we had selected. With this being said we were way too close to deadline to make the necessary changes and in the end it was axed from this issue and put back to our next issue out in November (BUMMER!!)
For me it was a weird and exciting experience. On one hand I got to deal with one of the biggest brands in the world, I put a lot of time and effort into completing the project and I did, so I was more than proud of myself. When it was rejected yeah I was a little down but on the upside this is my first issue, I feel I have learnt so much just from this one experience alone, most apparent the importance of strong levels of communication between client and designer, and even though the word free-range may be included in the brief to still remember the nature of your employer and to make sure that your vision is in sync with theirs.
So I walk with my head up high stay proud of my efforts and look forward to the next time my path crosses with the legendary Adidas.
PEACE!!
VIZ.
