A few months ago I was hired by Denali Marketing out of Minneapolis to develop some rough comp art to help them pitch a Best Buy ad campaign. Recently a brand new baseball stadium was built for the Minnesota Twins. Best Buy is a Minnesota-based company so the idea was to come up with a local print campaign to highlight Best...
A few months ago I was hired by the Trifecta BBQ sauce company to create an illustration for their new brand of BBQ sauce. It was a fun project which I blogged about showing the steps from intial concept to final artwork. I'm an illustrator, not a graphic designer, so I did not do the full label design. I just...
Today is Good Friday, the day Christians celebrate the torture, crucifixion, and death of Jesus Christ. So why is it called "good?" Good question. Earlier in my career I illustrated this 8-page cartoon Gospel tract. I hope it will explain the answer. Happy Easter! ...
A few months ago I was hired by the terrific team at Minneapolis agency RPM Connect to illustrate an in-store display for Act II Popcorn, a brand owned by ConAgra Foods. RPM came to me with a fun concept (two kids bouncing around on a sea of popcorn) and a rough layout for the signage, then asked me to work...
As a freelance illustrator I'm often hired by ad agencies and marketing firms to create "comp art" or "marker comps", which are fast, rough sketches used to pitch an idea to a client. They can be black-and-white or color, depending on the deadline and budget, but they are a lot of fun to do. Because clients are very protective of...
Several times a year I am called on by local ad agencies to do marker comps. "Marker comp" is an industry term leftover from the days before computers. Back then if an agency wanted to pitch an idea to a client they would sometimes bring in an illustrator, plop him in front of a drawing board stacked with paper and...
