texas historical commission – full page magazine

creative director: scott mcafee, art director: rob story, writers: dana satterwhite (got shot), sean armstrong (adrenaline), rob story (danger and horsepower), designer/retoucher: brad maxfield, illustration: eric bowman

this was a dream job for me: great budget, great clients and i was able to work with my friend and frequent collaborator, eric bowman. the idea was to enhance the drama and romanticism of the heritage trails program by making the ads look like old pulp novel covers. brad maxfield did a ton of illusion work to create the distressed “pulp” novel look. he also took eric’s illustrations and added the much needed detail that made them look so great. of course, there were lots of political pitfalls with this campaign and everything had to be 100% historically accurate, so i spent a lot of time on the phone with historians from the university of texas and texas state, enthusiasts, curators, collectors, auctioneers, etc., etc. unfortunately, the most exciting ad in the bunch, “got shot,” never ran due to the troubles down in mexico. the escapades of the drug cartels were so violent that the thc decided to kill it (so to speak). in addition to this print campaign, there was an online banner campaign (illustrated by raymond swanland) that we produced simultaneously.

below are many (but not all) of the hundreds of sketches that eric did during the course of the production of this series. i’ve also included some images that show the conceptual evolution of the individual ads. the color comp was the very first offering from eric. originally, the main image of the first ad was intended to be the pirate, jean laffite, and the two inset images were going to relate to: a) conquistadors and b) lasalle’s shipwreck. the focus of this first ad being early european settlement in, and exploration of, texas. laffite wasn’t going to fly for political reasons, so we changed the main image to a member of an “early spanish exploring party.” and the insets ended up featuring missionaries and again, lasalle’s ill-fated ship.