 When you have pro wrestler as a friend, life can get exciting. I had drew and design this logo for a t-shirt a couple of years ago. He then re used the artwork and created rig attire for his come back. My friend took a year off and made his debut this weekend and won a title from Zealot Wrestling. I had to take some photos.
 This has been a crazy month. My company hired an agency last summer to rebrand itself and all of its product brands. I am part of implementing the updated look, almost evolving the brand and implementing it in our digital and print communications. At first I was not wild about the brand development but there is a slick cohesiveness and a sophistication I am enjoying. Here are a couple of projects I have been working on. 
            
Last year was HellBoy's 25 anniversary. HellBoy is a character created by Mike Mignola, HellBoy fought Nazis occultists. Comic Con San Diego was celebrating by showcasing the character in their Souvenir Book and had a contest for artist to do their renditions of the character. My son who was 13 years old at the time, entered the contest. It was a proud Dad moment. I grew up reading and drawing comicbooks. I took his artwork, created vector artwork and made T-Shirts for us. Being in the creative field I love encouraging kids to express themselves through artwork. I think the shirt was bold and keeping the illustration red made it really stand out.
 Earlier last year I attended Marketing Nation presented by Marketo. I had a full schedule with my team, but I was able to sneak out on the first morning of the conference. I got an Uber and went exploring. I hiked all over the the Golden Gate Bridge. I was not able to walk across the bridge but I got some cool photos. 
  I designed artwork for merchandise for a friend who is a professional wrestler. He is gearing up to go back on the road and wanted new a new t-shirt for promotion. I take on fun projects like this to experiment. It keeps me loose and lets me try out techniques I wouldn't normally use. I took an event photo taken in Arizona and emphasized the the flying knee with vector elements. The best part of the design process for me is to do the mock ups.
I was part of a really fun project! I had to create a fun and interesting ad for a thermostatic mixing valve. It is a device you place on a water heater where it increases the capacity of hot water without buying a new water heater. In essence, you can have more hot water. I tried to conceptualize the pain points of losing hot water in the middle of a shower but also the benefits. Here were my initial concepts:
I refined a bit more, changed up the branding and reformatted the creative for social and digital ads: Concept: Product Focused
 Concept 2: Singing in the Shower!
 I really love this ad!
Catching a great sunrise in San Diego is not to difficult, we have amazing days. My good friend and long time mentor/partner Neil Brouillette and I got up extra early to shoot and record the San Diego sunrise at Spanish Landing and Harbor Island, both locations by the airport. I am obsessed with timelapse so I would set up my GoPro Hero 4 and capture the sunrise behind downtown San Diego. Neil is working on Panramic HDR's and testing how his equipment handles low light. It is always great to go out and work on the craft. Here is what I caught! GoPro Hero 4 Timelapse with extras         Still Photography Canon Rebel/ GoPro Hero 4  GoPo Selfie time! It has been a great start to the year! Yesterday I was out before dawn shooting and filming the sunrise in San Diego. I was at Spanish Landing by the airport with long time friend Neil Brouillette using my GoPro, Canon and even broke out my IPAD. It is so interesting to see the differences in quality and range. I was able to capture a timelapse of the sunrise with the GoPro that I'll be posting soon. I've already earned some frequent flyer miles, I visited Atlanta for Drupal training and a week later I was in Chicago reviewing a tradeshow booth I helped create. I can't say I miss the snow! I walked the show to do a competitive analysis and I was impressed by some of the larger manufactures but there were many booths that lacked design and missed the opportunity for branding. We revamped the way we showcased the products and gave a modern twist in how we showed plumbing behind the wall.  With Chris at the AHR Booth! I recorded a Facebook Live for AMA San Diego Content Marketing Special Interest Group. Frank Cowell of Elevator was the moderator and there was so much knowledge shared by the group. I picked up a couple of tips. It was fun to learn and network. The AMA San Diego is a great group!  AMA Content Marketing SIG. Two of my favs, Darlene Byrne and Frank Cowell. Whew! I plan on staying in San Diego for a bit, keep my feet on the ground and start building campaigns. I get my media calendar for the year next week so time to enter creator mode!  April was a busy month, I designed several campaign designs this month. We had a Content Marketing and Hispanic Marketing event with several job postings and a podcast promo. I was even a the guest host on one! Most of these were formatted for Facebook but I did several sizes for the different platforms. I was really happy how the Volunteer Appreciation week design turned out. I was able to pull the photo into Photoshop and mask out the background. Thanks for checking out my work!                           I am friends with a professional wrestler, it’s true. He asked me to help him out on a t-shirt design. His persona is the American Kaiju, he wrestles for the Japanese elite and has made his debut in the USA. He is the champion in the Phoenix territory. He gave me a rough mock up of a concept for a T-Shirt he had. I put it together and did the prep work for production. I really like how the design turned out. I’ve got my eye on the design on the yellow T-Shirt!  |
Mike MatamalaDesigner, Content Creator, Marketer Archives
February 2019
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