The client was Checkers Fast Food which at the time I didn’t even know existed anymore. The only thing I could think of was the abandoned Checkers building by the intersection of Western and Irving Park. Well it turns out they are still quite popular in the southern states, and southern Illinois included.

The project was very simple. They needed 3 advertising banners for the campaign “Fast Food Faster” and the ideas where already there.

• A burger speeding across the screen then making a ketchup and mustard skid mark

• A burger speeding across the screen, stepping on the brakes and losing the seeds off  the bun.

• A burger speeding across the screen and having the pickle spin off like a hub cap.

GENIUS!!!

Here are the solutions in action:
(and yes, that’s Dom Casual by request)

Ketchup and Mustard Skid Mark

Braking and Losing Seeds

Pickle Hubcap spinning off

Now my flash skills are below average at best. In fact I find flash ultimately confusing and unnecessary. It didn’t matter, I was so in love with this project that I would force myself to figure everything out needed to bring this to life.

I am not quite sure what happened to the banners after I submitted them, I never heard back. I just received a check in the mail a few weeks later and that was that.

Ed’s illustration skill speaks for itself, so his decision for a clean and simple layout was one that I wholeheartedly agreed with, and to make things even better… he designed himself one hell of a nice-looking logo.  With these elements to work with my job just became a whole-lot easier.

After sending me a few examples of sites showcasing the work of artists doing similar things he was doing. The decision to create a wordpress site  was one that I was confident in. This would enable him to upload how ever many images he wanted as blog posts with commenting capabilities.

It took 1 evening for me to build the framework and 1 afternoon with him present to knock this one out. Here is the final result:

http://www.edpincombe.com

I am really enjoying making these custom WP login screens, it’s just a little something extra to make the experience of using WP for your own site, a bit more enjoyable. Here is Ed’s:

In the beginning we really tried to create a rough/grungy look that was not unlike other operations offering the same thing, but there had to be key elements that were a bit more interesting. We took a lot of cues from things like horror movie posters and skateboard graphics. We even sought inspiration in old hardcore album covers. The creative direction was a success and people began to catch on to the “Wrecking Ball look”. We even put a lot of work into a clothing line called “Wreck Wear” but it was put to rest not only for the exhausting task of maintaining a clothing line but the extensive costs that go into printing t-shirts (even though I was knocking out the shirts with a heat transfer machine in my studio apartment.) The main focus then went into building the gym.

In short, after a year of opening in a small store front, it out grew itself, and had to move into a much larger warehouse space. With this move came higher costs so more investment dollars where at stake and the website had to take on a new look with simpler navigation to reach a broader base of potential students.

I had originally redesigned the site entirely in html having thought that I would be making all the edits. However those billable hours can start to add up quickly. It was then decided that a blogging platform and a simple content management system be put into place. I  had heard that using Wordpress as a CMS was gaining in popularity so I did some research and brainstormed a way it could be implemented into the Wrecking Ball site, but what I didn’t want to do is lose the visual identity that was already established.

I arrived at this execution:

http://www.wreckemall.com

The blogging portion of the site is on the home page and displays only 1 post at time with commenting capabilities right below it . A simple list of past blog posts and a monthly archive list was all the archiving I felt it needed. The site was reduced to 6 main sub-categories so the main content area is all that needed to be tied into the CMS.

I broke the pages down like this:

I designed the content to adhere to the WP built-in page editor with the addition of the TinyMCE Advanced Editor plugin.

The only other solution I needed to resolve was an easily maintainable photo gallery and video gallery. I came to the conclusion that the best way to showcase photos and photo galleries was a flickr account, and to take it step further I installed the highly customizable flickr RSS plugin to display thumbnails of the most recently added images in the right sidebar of the home page. Since Wrecking Ball already had a YouTube account I simply added a YouTube video feed in the left sidebar. It worked out perfectly.

For the finishing touches I wanted to create a customized log-in area for those maintaining the site. Just a little something to bring it all together.  I found a great tutorial at wpengineer.com which uses a php hook and some simple CSS.

Here is how it turned out:

I can safely say that my role in developing the visual identity for Wrecking Ball has been a big learning experience for designing on the web.

Photo by kellybelly

Click here to download the zip archive.

Here are a few that I really liked

The rest can be found here.  Note: The site is in Bulgarian.

I’m bummed because I did get 3 or 4 songs on video but the sound was so loud that the audio is completely trashed. I should have wrapped my camera in a sock or something. I was able to salvage video of the countdown right before they started.

– Click here to read a great review of the show in the Chicago Sun-Times.

– Click here to see the countdown video.

– Pics from the show:

Will this be my year? Who knows. It’s off to a good start though, tonight I will be seeing one of my favorite bands whom 9 years ago played their “last” show with the Flaming Lips at the Metro. I did not attend because if you remember… Y2K… The world as going to end.  Well, it didn’t, and I am fortunate to see HUM tonight in a 2nd appearance since their “last” show in 2000.

- CHEERS!