Creative Strategy: From San Francisco to Boston for Yellowstone, Grant Gilliland treks cross country in the name of art.
It’s amazing. Not only will my work be featured prominently in the Young Scientist Exhibit at the Yellowstone National Park, but I also got the pleasure of creating it during an incredibly eventful and interesting time in my own life. So while there were a lot of great things about this project, I’d say the greatest was the timing. Here’s how it happened: I was already on my way to go live with a close friend in Boston when I got word that Christopher Chadbourne and Associates, the design firm heading the Yellowstone project, was based there! I’d love to take credit for the synchronicity that happened there, but it remains a mystery that still makes me smile.
I remember the first phone call about the project, in the late summer of 2008. I proceeded to sit dumbfounded on a conference call with Scott and the project manager Ernesto Mendoza. The idea that I would be creating characters to be made into giant signs for the Young Scientist Exhibit at Yellowstone National Park was something I could not have predicted or imagined…it seemed so massive, so out of my league, so…perfect!
For the next year, I was on a giant high that even carried me all the way from my home of San Francisco to a place on the East Coast that I’ve always wanted to live. The project began in the early fall of 2009, a particularly scenic time to live in Boston. I would take long walks to the Christopher Chadbourne (CCA) office building and have face-to-face meetings about the work with Ernesto. Being there in person helped me recognize and solve visual problems much quicker, because they could be pointed out to me on the spot. I felt close to the project, and it made me feel so much more engaged. Of course, the whole walking-to-the-meeting thing was cut short by the onset of winter, but communications with Ernesto and CCA stayed strong, and thrived.
In the beginning stage of the character development, I referred to the mockups from CCA and reinterpreted the style to fit my own sensibilities. Once sketches were submitted, I would spend several rounds with Ernesto on the phone and via email. We would also plan additional face-to-face meetings about a week in advance, where we would have conference calls with the client. We discussed details about each character, we brainstormed and analyzed the positioning of the limbs, the facial expression, as well as the overall composition and background pieces. Every round felt closer than the last, and with Ernesto I was able to strike the perfect balance between my stylized tendencies and approachable, friendly-feeling elements.
Once sketches were client-approved, I was able to take them into Illustrator and lay down the vector linework. I was also briefed about how the layering and ordering of the vector file was crucial to the final manufactured product, since each sign was going to be made out of several layers of MDF. The color work was done using Pantone colors, a method which was rather unknown to me at the time. It was startling to see how different the colors looked onscreen. I know I had a few moments of doubt where I pictured the images being several feet tall and printed all sorts of goofy non-matching colors…ahhh, what a nightmare! However, once the images were printed out to check the real appearance of the color, my fears were eased.
After spending part of my time moving back from the East Coast to my home base of San Francisco, I resumed the last leg of the project by tweaking colors, and playing with the sizes and placement of background elements. The heavy lifting was indeed over! I still can’t even imagine how my work will look once it is in place at Yellowstone. It’s one thing to see it on a screen, and another to see it printed out, but to see it several feet tall and mounted on a wall? Now that’s a step up! I plan on being there in person at Yellowstone for the opening of the Young Scientist … besides, I always enjoy a good cross-country trip.
