iSpirit of Nashville

Check out this short new video to see how the app works! 

Several months ago, our friends at FireFly Logic and RedBone Entertainment approached us about creating an iPhone app that marries our poster and postcard art with video footage, GPS mapping, and web links. The result is a hand-held virtual tour of Music City that even allows you to send digital postcards of our Spirit of Nashville art to your pals as you walk around Nashville, enjoying everything this great city has to offer.

The process was simple on our end—we just created the iPhone screen art. Then Firefly took our poster designs, some content from our web site and video footage and built a very easy-to-use (and cool-looking) app. After a few rounds of testing, they sent it to Apple. Now everyone with an iPhone can take an artsy virtual tour of Nashville, Tennessee. 

If you download the $2.99 app, you’ll be able to experience Music City from anywhere. If you are lucky enough to be in town, you can plan a fun-packed day in The Ville by checking out video clips, poster art, and links to Nashville’s most popular destinations and landmarks. After using the map feature to navigate to your destination, you can send a digital postcard of your adventure featuring one of the 70+ designs in the award-winning poster collection. 

Next we’ll be thinking about turning our Spirit of Nashville Coffee Table Book into an e-book for the iPad. More details on that to come!

Download the iPhone App for only $2.99 at: 

http://spiritofnashvilleapp.com

French Paper. American Design.

 

We designers tend to geek out about stuff like illustrated posters and postcards—(especially when they are printed on cool paper!) So when the coolest paper company on the planet asked us to partner with them to create a new promotional calendar, it was like being handed an authentic Boba Fett costume and being asked to make a personal appearance at a Star Wars Convention.

We have long since been fans of the French Paper Company’s amazing products—made famous by their promotional materials designed by Charles S. Anderson (no relation to Anderson Design Group founder Joel Anderson.) 

French Paper encouraged us to dream up a deluxe promotional calendar that would feature Smart White and PopTone papers. So our team of artists went right to work, trying to out-do our previous Spirit of Nashville calendars by assembling a brand new collection of illustrated prints and uber-cool postcards that feature original travel art of our favorite U.S. cities and national parks.

McQuiddy Classic, a 100-year-old Nashville printing company partnered with us in a 3-way joint promotion to produce this 13-month calendar full of 11" x 14" ready-to-frame mini prints. Printed on Smart White paper, with a set of 16 postcards printed in silver metallic ink on PopTone paper, this became the perfect opportunity to unveil our new Art And Soul Of America poster collection.

McQuiddy Classic Printing has helped to put the Spirit of Nashville Collection on the map by producing fabulous promotional calendars each year since 2004. In a few weeks, McQuiddy reps will have 500 of these special edition 2010 calendars to give away. French Paper reps will distribute 2,500 calendars around North America, and Anderson Design Group will give away 250 calendars to clients and friends. For anyone else who is interested, we have also reserved 250 calendars to sell on our ArtAndSoulOfAmerica.com site.

We hope you can get your hands on one of the 3,500 limited edition calendars that French, McQuiddy Classic and Anderson Design Group will be giving away. And if you can’t snag a free promo calendar, you can always buy one at www.ArtAndSoulOfAmerica.com.

Running with the Right Crowd

Anderson Design Group has had the pleasure of working on dozens of posters ever since our Spirit of Nashville Collection became popular. Recently, we were asked to create a new poster and t-shirt design for an annual charity race called the Boulevard Bolt. The race takes place every Thanksgiving Day on scenic Belle Meade Boulevard in Nashville, TN. Since 1994, the Boulevard Bolt has grown from 2,500 participants to nearly 8,000 participants. Today, it ranks among the largest 5-mile races in the country, having raised over $1.4 million for the homeless community in Nashville since it began.

The Boulevard Bolt Committee representative emphasized that the event always happens Thanksgiving Day, so a fall theme would be in order. So ADG staff artist Andy Gregg produced a couple of concepts that were like Art Deco Olympic posters. The designs looked right at home in the Spirit of Nashville Collection. Unsatisfied (and a little bored with himself) Andy set out to create a design that would involve some kind of graphic pattern or rhythm based on autumn colors and symbols, using positive and negative space to create drama. Inspired by a 1960's-style Modern design style (made famous by TWA Airlines travel posters,) Andy created a bold, stylish option with hand-lettering that was very different from the Spirit of Nashville look. To his surprise, the Boulevard Bolt committee picked this more inventive and risky design.

In Andy’s own words: “I've always loved retro design, and having illustrated many of the Art & Soul of America prints, I had had plenty of chances to work in an Art Deco style. However, I really hadn't been able to break out of the first half of the 20th century on a poster design project. I saw this as an opportunity, figuring the Modern style would be conducive to the flat, graphic nature of this concept. What you see is the final product. The header typography I created is admittedly not really 60's Modern, but rather conflation of 60's and 70's script styles. When designing a piece that does not need to be from a specific design movement, why limit it?” 

The project took about 5 days from start to finish. Andy had a great time working on it, and the Boulevard Bolt committee was very pleased to have such a cool design for this year’s event.