The Cool: Piracy Project by Mirco Pagano & Moreno De Turco

Extremely creative work by designers Micro Pagano and Moreno De Turco from Milan,Italia for the Piracy Project, which took over 6500 CDs of the artists' own greatest hits CDs to make.

Painting the Town Red (and Blue)

A few weeks ago, we got an interesting inquiry from the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky. Danville will be host to one of the upcoming Vice-Presidnetial debates.

The Community Arts Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating arts opportunities such as art exhibits, community events, and arts education. Their building has multiple galleries for viewing art displays, a Grand Hall for hosting community events, and multiple rooms for classes in dance, drawing, music, and more.

They decided to get involved in the general sprucing-up that has been happening all over Danville in preparation for the Vice Presidential debate in October. One of Danville’s prominent Main Street buildings is currently empty, and they thought of an easy way to improve the look of Main Street—paint the vacant, empty-looking windows with a festive debate-themed design. They found our Political Pimp designs on the internet and contacted us to get permission to use them as inspiration for a series of painted windows.

They used volunteers to wash, tape, and coat the windows in three layers of white paint. Then local artists used stencils of our art to paint a block-long stretch of windows! Over the course of four or five days, they were able to paint the mural while townsfolk looked on and admired. As a token of support for their civic service, Anderson Design Group sent them a set of Political Pimp prints to hang in in the Community Arts Center. After the debates, they will sell the prints and use the proceeds to continue serving the Danville Community via the arts.

The designs that inspired the murals were created by Joel Anderson, founder of Anderson Design Group. Be looking for shots of our art on Main Street windows during the debate coverage on October 10!

NEW Metro Parks Posters

In 2011, Metro Parks asked us to create a series of 12 posters that would celebrate various public parks in the Nashville area. We liked the idea so much, we offered to create the art for FREE as a way of giving back to our community. (As you can tell by our Spirit of Nashville Collection, we believe that as artists and citizens of our community, it is important to use our talents and time to promote and celebrate Music City!)

We want our art to raise awareness of the things that make Nashville a great place to live and work. Public parks need constant care and upkeep. A lot of the funds needed for on-going improvements come from Friends Groups—community groups that volunteer manpower and grass-roots fundrasing to keep our public spaces beautiful and safe for everyone to enjoy. We created the art at our own expense, and Metro Parks committed to purchasing some copies of the prints to re-sell as fundraising tools and give away to promote the parks and raise public awareness. We have enjoyed creating the art, and we are hearing that our fellow citizens enjoy decorating with the prints!

We introduced the first set of 3 prints several months ago. It included McCabe Golf Course, Two Rivers Mansion, and Shelby Park. We have recently completed 3 more sets of prints. They include Fort Negley, Hadley Park and Centennial Park.

Fort Negley is on a hill that overlooks downtown Nashville. All that remain are the stone foundations. It was the largest of a group of forts built by the Union, and the largest inland masonry fort built during the Civil War. It was 600 feet long, 300 feet wide, and covered four acres of land. The workers lived in a contraband camp on the northeast side of the worksite, and were both free blacks and slaves who had been conscripted by the Union to serve as laborers. Between 600 and 800 died during the construction, and only 310 ever received pay. This print was created by ADG artist Andy Gregg.

Hadley Park was one of our nation’s first African-American public parks. It features a library, community center, and open spaces for play and relaxation. Nashville Mayor Hilary Howse opened the park on July 4, 1912. The land Hadley Park occupies, along with the property Tennessee State University is situated on, was originally part of the John L. Hadley plantation. Even though a former slave owner, in 1873 John Hadley invited the great African American abolitionist and civil rights reformer Frederick Douglas to Nashville to his home to speak to the former slave population and help them adjust to their new lives as free people. Like Hadley Park Community Center, the Hadley Park Branch Library was built to serve the African-American community. This print was created by ADG artist Edward Patton.

Centennial Park is Nashville’s premier park. Located on West End and 25th Avenue North, the 132-acre features: the iconic Parthenon, a one-mile walking trail, Lake Watauga, the Centennial Art Center, historical monuments, an arts activity center, a beautiful sunken garden, a band shell, an events shelter, sand volleyball courts, two dog parks, and an exercise trail. Thousands of people visit the park each year to visit the museum, see exhibits, attend festivals, and just enjoy the beauty of the park. This print was created by ADG artist Ligia Teodosiu.

The remaining 6 Metro Parks Prints prints will be unveiled before the end of this year. They will include:
Fannie Mae Park
Bells Bend
Cumberland Park
Public Square
Greenways
Warner Parks

We were also approached by the Army Corps or Engineers and asked to create a series of prints to commemorate water projects that have become an important part of our region’s outdoor recreation, water management, and power generating. The first print in this series features Center Hill Dam

All of these lovely prints are available for purchase at www.SpiritOfNashville.com. Each year, Anderson Design Group donates 10% of all Spirit of Nashville proceeds to Nashville Community causes.

New Political Pimp designs!

As the elections ramp up to full-throttle, we thought we should do our part as Americans, as designers, and as huxters to create art that adds to the whole spectacle. Several months ago, ADG’s founder, Joel Anderson started creating few political prints to encourage folks to cut through the spin and find out what each party is really selling. (The candidates and the media are always selling us something. They might talk about the economy, but WE are actually producing products that create jobs and stimulate the economy!) We even set up a new store section on our web site called Political Pimp to make our cheeky, inspiring and irreverent designs available to poster fans of all political stripes.

After Republican Mitt Romney picked running mate Paul Ryan, and President Obama decided to stick with Joe Biden, we knew that the stage was set for a few months of entertaining full-out smack-down campaign combat. We asked our intern Aaron Johnson (who will be a full-time staff designer soon) to contribute 2 sets of designs for the under-30 crowd. Aaron delivered with the devilishly funny roll-play-card-game-inspired Campaign Combat series and the hip, adorable 8-bit Multi-Player Melee series.

Then veteran staff artist Ligia Teodosiu came up with 2 prints that celebrate great presidents from each party. The quotes she selected for each of the presidents are inspiring and informative.

The whole series has turned out to be a lot of fun... we hope they get people thinking about the issues, our economy, and our nation’s future.

After we finished all of the poster concepts. Joel took the designs and created 3 collectible postcard sets:
• One set for Republicans,
• Another set for Democrats,
• And a third set for folks who are either undecided, or just want to own a copy of every design in this series.

All the prints are for sale on our site from now until the elections, and they will be featured on Fab.com in a sale that runs from August 30th to September 3rd.

These ready-to-frame designs look great on the wall. Get yours while you can—these are limited edition prints, and they are already going fast!

Ram Trucks Ad Series

We were recently asked by The Richards Group, America's largest independent ad agency, to create a series of posters that would double as print ads for Ram trucks. They had seen our Art and Soul of America poster series, and really wanted to apply the rough, WPA-era aesthetic to their ad series.

The ads would be totally illustrated, and would feature the 2012 line of Ram Trucks in scenic vistas in and around various Texas State Parks. The fact that they would be completely illustrated was a big departure from most vehicle ads (and ads in general) because the item being advertised would be solely interpreted/displayed through illustration, which we believed was imperative to maintaining fidelity with the vintage style.

This was the mission: The Ram Truck brand would capture the beauty of Texas landscape in a series of 4 retro-inspired print ads Placed in the Annual Hunting and Fishing Guide. Ram Trucks would be the ‘Official Automotive Sponsor’ of the guide. They wanted us to help them create art like the Illustrative posters created in the 1930s and '40s that stirred the public’s imagination for travel and adventure. They sent us these old WPA posters for inspiration:

This is how the process worked: The creative team at the Richard’s Group wrote some great text for us to infuse into the poster designs. Their art direction team provided us with mock-ups of the general look and feel for each ad and poster, along with beautiful truck photography. Staff designer/illustrator Andy Gregg sketched up scenes that included the landscape, typography, and the truck. Then he set to work rendering 4 Ram Truck ads featuring illustrative renderings of the Lone Star state’s picturesque Rio Grande Valley, Balanced Rock, Enchanted Rock and Lighthouse Rock landscapes as settings for the Ram 1500 Mossy Oak Edition Outdoorsman, Ram 2500 Power Wagon, Ram 1500 Lone Star and Ram 1500 Laramie Longhorn.

The designs took about a month to complete, and we decided to unify the designs more by style, rather than color palette. (A special thanks to intern Aaron Johnson for help with some of the backgrounds as turnaround got tight!)

One component of an authentic vintage poster design is typography. We did extensive research on classic hand-lettering. 2 sources of inspiration came from old bus tickets and from antique typewriter ribbon tins:

It was quite a job to capture the likeness of each vehicle, without adding too much detail. The vintage style prints we were emulating were screen printed in limited colors, so there was a fine line between rendering perfect detail and creating an authentic classic illustration. Andy handled it perfectly.

“This was the perfect opportunity to take a different creative approach,” said Olivier Francois, Chief Marketing Officer, Chrysler Group LLC. “The use of vintage type-styles, hand-rendered illustrations and muted color palettes create a nostalgic approach to advertising art that we hope will resonate with consumers just as the original posters helped romanticize each national park destination.”

In addition to print ads, posters and postcard sets created from the advertising artwork. They are available for purchase at:
www.ramtrucks.com/outfitter
www.AndersonDesignGroup.com/HorsepowerNationalPark

Here is a look at the 4 finished poster designs and postcard set:

Denny’s Tour of America

We have been selling our classic American travel posters in flash sale events on Fab.com since summer of 2011. This national exposure—in addition to selling them on our own site—has caught the attention of art directors from some big national ad agencies. When the agency for Denny’s Restaurants (Erwin Penland) saw our classic American illustration and design work, they asked us if we could help them create a new look for the Denny’s Tour of America menu.

Each summer, Denny’s creates new all-American dishes for their menu, and they give it a travel theme. It made perfect sense to marry our vintage travel poster look with their menu concept. Our new pals at Erwin Penland (EP) were great to work with. They wrote the text, shot beautiful food photos, laid out the menu, and commissioned us to create 7 illustrations and a logo. The illustrations included: a menu cover and 6 American cities or regions that inspired special dishes featured in the Tour of America menu.

We started with the Tour of America logo. Staff artist Andy Gregg worked under Joel Anderson’s creative direction to design a logo that evoked the glory days of American road travel. After a few sketched concepts, the creative team at EP pitched our logo to the decision makers at Denny’s. They loved the design, and the process moved ahead with ease.

Next, the chefs in the Denny’s test kitchens developed some tasty looking new dishes. (We never got to sample the food during the process—we just got teased with gorgeous, mouth-watering photography of each featured menu item!)

Once the recipes were tested and confirmed, the art directors at EP assigned the 6 travel destinations that went with the menu items. We had our list of American cities & regions, and we set out to illustrate travel posters for each one. Andy worked on the menu cover, which was to suggest a taste bud adventure, exploring America from coast-to-coast. Joel worked with Ligia Teodosiu and Shelby Rodeffer and Andy Gregg to come up with the other 6 illustrations.

Once all of the illustrations were approved, the design team at EP took our art and skillfully integrated it into the menu design. The result was classic and delicious-looking!

Everyone liked the art so much, they wanted to see it as illustrated travel prints and collectible postcards. So we created the Denny’s Tour of America collection and now offer these beautiful posters and cards on our Studio Store site: AndersonDesignGroup.com (then click on SHOP and pull down the Denny’s Tour of America Collection.)

 

The campaign has been a success for Denny’s. We have enjoyed working with them and the great folks at Erwin Penland to blend classic art with modern advertising! Our pals at EP were proud of the outcome, too. To thank the folks at Denny’s corporate, they commissioned us to create a custom version of the menu cover that was framed and hung on the wall in the EP offices and teh Denny’s corporate headquarters. Notice how we added the EP and Denny’s corporate buildings to the landscape!