Spirit Magazine portraits

These are the last 3 portraits I did for Spirit Magazine - Howard Stoeckel, Richard Nelson Bolles, and T. Boone Pickens. The Howard Stoeckel portrait (top) is out in the current issue. Apparently he's the CEO of Wawa Food Markets, so he's got that going for him. My wife is from New Jersey, so I've purchased many a convenient snack from Wawa. Plus, it's fun to say.. Wawa!!

By the way, if you're thinking those words in their heads look sort of difficult to design and draw.. you would be absolutely correct.

wawa

End of 2008 Update!!

I realize that's it's been quite a while since my last update. Thankfully, it's due to a huge amount of work in November and December, and not just complete laziness. In November, I worked on a project for Nike & Footlocker making artwork to be animated for 4 TV commercials. The work was added to live footage that had already been shot, with the animation going on in the background, but unfortunately the job was killed right before starting on the 4th spot. It's a long story which I will cover later when I post some of the work.. but it was still a great project to work on. For now, here's a teaser image:


On top of this project, I've been creating much more work for Key Bank to go along with the current campaign I created over the summer. I've been doing collateral work for in-bank posters, brochures.. even for the backs of ATM displays, as well as getting tons of requests from individual banks for direct mail pieces. One of the coolest applications of this collateral work will be as large-format banners inside the Key Arena in Seattle. All of this Key stuff has worked out to be around 24 illustrations in 2 months, many of which I will post soon.. but here's a couple to start with:


Also, in the past 2 months, I've created an ad campaign for IBM, made another 2 Men's Journal portraits, 2 more Spirit Magazine portraits, a piece for Dwell Magazine, a couple portraits for Walden University, and started work for some Patagonia t-shirts. More on all of these later...

Happy New Year to everyone!
- Tim

Spirit Magazine portraits

Here are my portraits from the last 3 issues of Spirit Magazine - Dean Kamen, Cathie Black, and Yvon Chouinard. I actually pitched them the idea of using Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of Patagonia, since he's an incredibly inspirational business man. (I also happen to be good friends with his kids.. Fletcher and Claire.) Patagonia is one of the most environmentally-conscious companies around, and they basically started the trend of using organic or recycled materials in their products - like using recycled plastic bottles to make fleece. Oh, and Yvon pretty much invented ice climbing and modern climbing tools. Here's a cool interview of him (though it is a bit old): http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/22/little-chouinard/

I do have a disclaimer to make on Yvon's portrait, however. I'm given the list of words for each portrait from the copywriters, and in this case I protested a bit about the word "Advertising".. but still had to keep it in. It's sort of misleading out of the context of the magazine, with the accompanying interview, because Patagonia actually tries to avoid advertising whenever possible: "We hardly advertise. In the late 1980's, we grew as much as 50 percent a year, and it nearly destroyed us. Now we grow by word of mouth, or between 3 to 10 percent a year."

Spirit Magazine portrait

This is the first of a monthly illustration assignment I'll be doing for Spirit Magazine. It's the in-flight magazine for Spirit Airlines. Each month will feature a different, prominent business-person (mostly company founders, I think), and some of the history and philosophy of their company represented by a sort of brain-map. The brain-map was the art director's idea, and took some time to get to work.. but I think I've figured out a good process for future portraits.