why not associates

Back in the early 1990's when I just started my career in graphic design, one of the design firms that was influential in developing my own style was why not associates from the UK. The firm was started in 1987 by Andy Altmann, David Ellis, and Howard Greenhalgh, all met each other as students and studied at the Royal College of Art. These are pages from their 1997 book.



Book cover (left) and poster for Vote Labour (right). I can't imagine how insane this was to do before photoshop had layers! There was a time when Photoshop only had one layer and you can only undo once. Those were the days.



Taken from sketchbooks while still at the Royal College of Art. You can see the influence of their professor, Dutch designer Gert Dumbar, on their work. The de Stijl movement, which originated from Holland, had a major impact on modern day graphic design.



Intro spread. Walks you through their history. Interesting to see how their design styles evolved as computers became accessible to designers.



Next Directory Seven brochure dividers.



Hull 1992 Arts Festival posters. Still looks fresh today, 15 years later.

Scion x Racing Code Collab Tee

When Steve Hatanaka (a very cool guy) over at Scion asked me if Racing Code would like to design a limited edition shirt for their upcoming NADA tradeshow, I said sure no problem. Then he told us he needed it in a week, I said hmm, long pause...calculating the amount of time it would take to design, prep, and silkscreen, and said it's PROBABLY doable. Luckily, the design we proposed was approved and our silk screen production had some down time to squeeze this in.


The big idea behind this shirt is really to promote "Optomize," which is a brand under Scion that distributes 3rd party accessories and apparel (Racing Code included!) at Scion dealerships. We came up with a catchy lead-in "Maximize, Personalize, Realize" to further emphasize their brand name. For the design we wanted to go simple. Let the Optomize brand be the hero. Everything was done just in time to ship these off to Vegas.