We collaborated with Brandon, Redshift's art director, on illustrating an article about big data transforming modern architecture—just as Sabermetrics transformed baseball. Brandon wanted to use vintage baseball cards for the art direction—and we were happy to dive into that world.
Illustration Style & Color Inspiration
We kicked off the project with quick phone call before pulling together reference images for color and style. This gave us great direction—flat, desaturated art, with bold lines and simple shapes.
We also dove into a very fun research project of vintage baseball cards—design that's held up well over the last 50 years:
The colorblocking and typography are a lot of fun—and look on-point now. We also loved the outline effect on the headshots, leftover from when designers actually had to clip the photos with razorblades and manually composite the image. We thanked our lucky stars for Photoshop, and started on the rough sketches.
Rough Sketch Review & Feedback
We presented three detailed sketches and quickly came to the realization that we had to scale back on the detail or we'd miss the deadline. We worked together to simplify each image to allow enough time to complete everything for the publication date.
Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how collaborating on a project works in Lightboard:
Final Image
We finished the project ahead of schedule, with six great images to accent the story:
Read the entire article at Redshift: Like Sabermetrics Changed Baseball, Big Data Will Transform Intelligent Buildings.
