One of the first duties I was charged with at Acme Brick, is to create and keep track of Catalog Sheets for over 100 brick blends across the company. This involves coordinating with the photographers for the image of panels and home elevations to create these sheets. It was also imperative that I keep track of the new and retired blends as they came and went over time, to ensure that out of date literature was pulled and new sheets were created as needed. These sheets effectively function like a standard product catalog would, but also allows sales reps to pick and choose the blends they offer to their clients from multiple manufacturing plants.
The Brick Press is an internal newsletter, or rather newspaper, that is printed one to four times a year and is distributed to all plants, sales locations, and retirees. It chronicles the year and any major company updates, as well as containing images sent in from any location on awards, events, retirements, births, and more. The issues range in page count according to the amount of content, usually around 12 pages.
I am also called on to help with packaging and labelling of new products. Working around existing dies for boxes and creating new art that fit the specs help launch new items into the market. Along with the prettier stuff, I work up the required safety labels and SDS sheets, as it needs to be just as legible as the rest.
My position at Acme Brick allows me to have many opportunities to create unusual or one off items. In this case we needed a special door hanger for the photographers in the field to leave at the homes they would shoot as a curtesy to the homeowner. In my spare time I worked up a vinyl decal of our mascot, the Brick Boy, and had quite a few printed and distributed both internally and at tradeshows, as a bit of fun. Often different departments would also reach out and need something specific, like the tear away sheets that were assembled into pads for associate use.
Manuals for various departments required help to turn their Word doc into fully fledged book. That is where I came in. Paragraph styles were essential to allowing this book to be reflowed as many times as needed to get the final project. In this case it was tried out in an 8x10 size as well as a 5.5x8.5 size, which ended up being the choice as it meant they could easily fit into a toolbox or glovebox. Though the content was there I often had to enhance it with images and illustration to keep it from becoming taxing to read.
Tradeshows are scheduled throughout the year and have various audiences. This required art changes to take place to suit the needs of the show, while using our existing framework. Often it was changed out to display specific new products or go from residential to commercial applications.
Web ads are also a standard product that help to simply get the Acme name out in front of wider audiences. In many cases they would be on websites targeting architects and builders, but also sport fans whose teams we sponsored. The range of 6 images across the top are the stills from a repeating gif ad.
Print ads serve a similar purpose as web ads, but in this case with the increased amount of room to work in, I would get to tailor the ad to the specific publication it was meant for and pull in some different imagery.
As mentioned before, Acme Brick partners with quite a few Texas teams, from high school baseball all the way up through the professionals. It was an honor to get to design a full page ad for the Houston Astros magazine, as well as create a large sign for in the stadium concourse. The bottom left three images are alternates of that full page ad, that I had a lot of fun making.
A billboard sign was a very new challenge for me, with interesting parameters, such as the need to be easily read and understood in the handful of seconds a driver would see it. In this case incorporating the large headshot of our spokesperson, Pudge Rodriguez, as well as several lines of text and two logos required a clear hierarchy in order to not become overwhelming. The banner below was displayed at the building of the team’s new ballpark in Arlington, Texas.
Acme allowed me the chance to work on the LED signage for two local teams, the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Wings. Both basketball teams have an amazing following and it was very cool to get to see my work wrapping the inside of the stadiums.
Acme Brick also has quite a few offshoot companies our department also serves. This includes the IBP GlassWalk product. I was challenged to update an existing 4 page document from 2017 that had been serving them well, but had gotten a few remarks about how it got the message across. Since this was primarily for architects and engineers, it was important to add in the product drawings as well as showcase the impressive installations. Having a full gallery spread at the beginning allowed IBP to show off a few jobs on a larger scale, while giving each specific product line its own page with yet more images of jobs. It was difficult to balance the amount of content with a clear ability to read and not get overwhelmed.
Acme TC Cladding was a similar job, but on a larger scale. This product has 5 different lines, as well as many options for colors, surfaces and accessories. Wrangling architect drawings, wall diagrams, product details, along with stunning images was a challenge, that was solved through a standard set of four pages for each of the 5 products. This way it was easy to compare the specifications between products. The final 32 page catalog is still evolving as more specifications and images are forthcoming.
I also had a hand in creating the look and feel, as well as content, for the website, acmetccladding.com, which is built in Drupal.
Along with the catalog a chip board was made, its function was to simply and easily show all the color options and 5 product lines in a minimum of space. This was a quick way to get sales teams the basics of the product line in a format that they could share with clients.
This was a fun one. Made up a quick 8 page coloring and activity book for children of customers who visit our showrooms. We also ordered custom crayon sets. All art was done by me and included a maze, connect the dots, coloring and I Spy image, fun facts and more.
One of my many jobs is to take the raw information, often in a word document, from other departments and turn it into something easily understood and eye catching. Here is an example of information on a new customer payment portal - before and after.
Another longer, ongoing project, is working in conjunction with the Engineering department to revamp the Special Shapes catalog. This is a technical document for architects and builders outlining and defining all the special decorate brick shapes our plants can make. At current standing the book is 180 pages, but will be an online interactive pdf only with hotlinks embedded to skip between pages and download the cad drawing files online.
Brick might sell itself, but it also needs a helping hand sometimes. I put together this Inspiration Catalog in 2021, organizing over 130 brick color blends from across 15 plants into color families. Often buyers have a color in mind and it is helpful to see all color options from across our entire operation.
Our twice monthly eblast for architects is called Mirador - after the term for a “turret” shape - Not only did I design the logo, but also the look of the email itself, in Constant Contact. I maintain the schedule, update and create the content, and send it out.
Annual Christmas Cards are a tradition at Acme. Here I tried to perhaps make it a little silly, and got to do some fun photoshop work combining an image of our kiln with stock photography. One of our team even took the idea so far as to write full lyrics for a Christmas Song. I am told this one brought a lot of smiles to faces.
As with all companies the challenges presented by Covid required new marketing and signage materials. Here you see a few of the door and window clings I designed as well as a few morale boosting table cards we made up for the cafeteria area at the corporate headquarters.
Our current tagline “Brick is Only the Beginning” is adapted across multiple ad formats, both online and print.
Our tradeshow booth is ever evolving and most recently we purchased four 10 foot by 7 foot internally lit signs. It was certainly a new challenge to design something at this scale - not only did it have to be eye catching from afar but also present the info architects would want to know first. They also had QR codes printed so we had to be sure they would scan at a decent distance to keep social distancing rules.
This monumental task took about 5 months to complete. We had not had an official Associate Handbook since 2015, so working closely with HR we updated the handbook full of policies to a final count of 130 pages. There was also a separate Spanish version with its own layout. Both were printed during the height of the world supply issues at the end of 2021, start of 2022 but finally arrived to all 56 locations and 16 plants associates in February 2022.