The other day my friend Scott Marz, Art Director at GoWelsh Design called me and asked if I was interested in what sounded like a fun project.
It seems he and GoWelsh principle Craig Welsh had devised a plan to invite type designer Jessica Hische to speak at the Pennsylvania Society of Design an organization that Craig and Scott are both affiliated with. This project had huge relevance and importance to both of them as their studio and each of them individually are fanatical about type.
They conceived this idea to compose an invitation message spread out across 27 actual PA license plates. Yeah, they had to convince 27 of the society’s members to change their registrations to the totally obscure “thing” that would become their license plate. Now in this day and age of digital manipulation obviously this could have been accomplished through other means, and you may ask why was it not handled in that manner?
In Craig’s own words:
Why license plates?
We were working to design something that would be clearly associated with
Pennsylvania to play a key role in an invitation to Jessica. Society of
Design is in Pennsylvania and Jessica grew up and went to college in PA.
License plates, and their association with traveling, felt like a solid
framework within which to work on her invitation. The bottom of each plate
also includes a subtle ‘visitpa’ which is what we were asking her to do.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just Photoshop fake it? Why go through all that trouble for the real thing?
Photoshop is easy. No real effort to do that. Replica PA license plates are
not authentic and, again relatively easy to pull off. The project had to be
a legitimate effort for us in order for it to be attempted. We can say,
“Jessica, we would really like you to visit,” or, we could prove how much
Society of Design would like her to visit. It had to be unlike anything
anyone’s seen before. Society of Design tries to elevate design discourse.
You can’t elevate something unless you push the limits.
It took them over three months of writing, rewriting and applying to the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles to secure all the valid registrations needed to complete the message.
Then one day Scott walked into my studio with 27 Pennsylvania license plates that had to be photographed into a compelling invitation for Jessica quickly ’cause guess what? People had to get them on their cars and time was running out!
We talked about having them simply arranged onto a white background with a simple shadow. We decided the best way to accomplish that as a clean graphic presentation was to photograph them individually (and also it would have the added benefit of documenting every plate) and arrange them in Photoshop. We put up a set and moved through that pretty quickly. But, we wanted something more. I kept thinking out loud that we should make this into its own “still life” photo. We have lots of surfaces etc. around my studio and I suggested to Scott that perhaps we could find some funky piece of wood big enough to nail on all the plates in the proper arrangement. We did and bonus points…we found a jar of rusty nails!
I pulled out a 10′x20′ classic painted background, lit it simply from the upper left with a broad soft source, to make it more about the object itself than the light or the setting.
In the feature photograph I have presented the uncropped version. You can clearly see some of the studio and its surroundings.
I’ve also included a few behind the scenes photos taken by student Paul Boger who was at the studio helping that day.
It seems Jessica has accepted! Congrats to Craig, Scott, and Pa Society of Design. And thanks for including me in an awesome project.
Here are a few links of interest
Tags: ad agency, jessica hische, lighting, people, Photoshop, Still life, type, typography
Posted in Blog, People, Still Life |
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The other day my friend Scott Marz, Art Director at GoWelsh Design called me and asked if I was interested in what sounded like a fun project.
