Within a few days of letting friends know I was going all-in on The Hideout, I got my first referral. The person(s) who sent me the work are people I really admire, so there was a lot of gratitude and a tiny bit of pressure not to screw it up.

The client was Rally Cycling, the Circuit Sport pro team. I know absolutely nothing about professional cycling, in fact I may or may not have ridden a bike recently for the first time in maybe 5+ years and crashed. Fortunately, Sam, the team's CD, put me at ease and reassured me they only wanted me for my brain (not my body).

I was tasked with putting together a lockup for the 2021 season, which they had already decided was to be, "Get Ready for Tomorrow." The campaign was all about moving on from 2020 and preparing the team (and its fans) for a new season of cycling. My experience at ESPN came up during the onboarding phase, and may have put me front of mind for a sports-centered branding project, but what was really exciting to me was the vision Rally had which (in my opinion) was even more relevant to me.

I've been drawing in a lot of loose, funky styles lately to try and figure out what I enjoy illustrating and what clients want to see. During this exploratory phase, I've shared a lot of stuff that seems to resonate. Sam asked if I was a fan of Keith Haring, to which I replied, "OF COURSE," and that kind of set the tone for what we set out to make.

Originally we discussed just a few directions, but I wanted to take a shotgun approach since I had only done a few illustration-heavy client projects. I know how to build lockups, but illustrating them felt like a new thing to me. Usually what I design are text-heavy or vector-based graphic — badges, logos, icons, whatever — and as excited as I was to try something new, this felt like a necessary step in the process. I sent over nearly 20 sketches before the final 3 or 4 directions were chosen.

I began iterating pretty quickly, spending a lot of time on the iPad and way less time in Illustrator (which has become pretty normal for projects, since this occurrence). We identified 3 promising directions and stuck with them for several days until they were pretty close, compositionally-speaking. After that we began exploring color options.

Rally's main colors are orange and black, with multiple tints of both colors comprising the palette. A few secondary colors existed (you can see the yellows, blues and greens used in the illustrations above) but it always felt out of place. I'd gotten an early peek at the new kits, and the launch page included a lot of geometric shapes with several shades of orange. Full color just wasn't working.

Not only that, but with the geometric patterns, the hand-drawn lockup wasn't landing very well for me. It felt kinda like I was shoehorning an idea that Sam and I had both connected on before we really got started. This was a problem for me. Luckily, a solution just sorta... happened.

Every once in a while I get an idea that clicks and I have to get it out of my brain immediately. On a Saturday morning, after we'd all but settled on direction 2, this idea of a loosely drawn cyclist figure came to mind. I did some rough hand-drawn letters and got a feeling I was on to something. I quickly shot Sam a note and let him know that even though we'd both agreed we had the mark practically ready, this new option was a new favorite.

We talked about the potential for animation and went through some basic realignment and tweaking until it was obvious this new mark was the one Rally would pitch to corporate. I was pretty confident with this direction, but still, like with any new client, extremely relieved once it was approved.

<aside> 🤝 Like with most "campaign" projects, there are stakeholders outside the room where the designing is going on. I worked with Sam and Emily, who prepped files and prepared a presentation to Circuit Sport on behalf of the Rally Cycling team. They pushed to get the designs approved and worked through application, while I churned out illustration and animation assets. It was a total team effort and I couldn't have asked for better allies.

</aside>

You can see how the initial sketch and final versions are only slightly altered, the main difference being fewer background elements. This solidified Procreate's role in the sketching phase of my work process and helped achieve the illustrated look that Sam and I were excited about initially. The solid colors worked well against the geometric backgrounds, but refocusing the color version to be oranges-only made for a pretty cool full-color version.

I helped animate the mark by vectorizing the sketch (I think I only live-traced it in Illustrator) then adding a few frames of new paths using the pencil and smooth tools. I also only use the trackpad, so quirks to my method only helped achieve the look we were going for.

I also got to open up Photoshop and try some video-timeline stuff. Most of my animation experience is with frames — even at ESPN when someone needed animation work done, I'd hand-draw it or kick it over to one of the social designers — so this was a big win for me. Since this, I've actually done a few more video projects and the toolset I'm growing was worth trying this one differently. Here's a shot of it from Rally's team launch event:

https://youtu.be/SzWkrlY9O2A?t=81

All in all, this was a dream project from start to finish. Even my hesitancy to finish those early concepts, which led to the final version — I'm really proud of what we built and would 💯 do it again. Thanks to Sam, Emily and the entire Rally crew! I'm excited to watch some events this year and see if I can't get into bicycling (cycling?). #getreadyfortomorrow