Check out some pretty special projects I helped people on below. You can also read what happy people say about working with Sparky Firepants.
Let’s sit in our Thinking Chair
Early in my career, I helped develop characters and stories for the Nick Jr. show Blue’s Clues. If you have kids or have read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, you’ve probably heard of it.
Blue’s Clues got kids interacting with TV characters and helped them learn in a super fun way. The producers brought me on board to work with the story team, illustrating the scenes that would make up each episode. We tossed around ideas in that conference room like hot potatoes. On top of creating on-target concepts and illustrations, I got to use my quirky humor to get ideas unstuck.
Working with the smarty-pants talent at Nickelodeon taught me that using a sense of fun and creating a relaxed atmosphere is invaluable in helping people do their best work. Everyone brings unique gifts to a project. The best results come when everyone involved can honor that. It’s energizing. The work we did garnered several Emmy nominations and (more important) inspired a whole generation of kids to learn by playing games.
Now that I have my own studio I use all those experiences to help small business people and other designers. Like these people…
Pam & Charlie Lift Off in style
Pam Slim and Charlie Gilkey came to me as they were putting the final touches on their first Lift Off retreat. Now, Pam and Charlie are busy people. There was the administrative minutiae of finding a venue, setting up a sales page, and shooting video. And, since they actually care a great deal about each person they work with, they conducted one-on-one interviews to make sure the retreat was a great fit.
As a bonus, they decided to hand out fancy moleskine notebooks to each participant to take notes. They asked me to come up with a bright and fun illustration to make the books look awesome. With the retreat quickly approaching, they had no time to constantly give feedback on design. So they showed me the sales page and said, “Help!”
Pencil in hand and creative genius turned up to 11, I came up with a concept that captured the feeling of their retreat and the creative spirit of the group. To help them focus on creating a great event, I also took the printing and shipping off their hands. How did it turn out? I’ll let them tell you.
See Nick Design and an eerily accurate likeness
Nick Collins will always be one of my favorite clients. A fellow designer, he needed my illustration chops to help him revamp his logo. I love working with other designers on their projects. This is a great example of design give-and-take. Nick came away with a logo that reflected his unique personality and communicated his creative thinking talent.
Read the full story of Nick’s logo design.
Womb to Bloom gives birth to a cohesively-illustrated website
Greg and Heather Zellers were embarking on an ambitious website project. They had great content lined up. Greg is a coding guru. They ran into some snags in the graphics department and needed someone who understood what they were trying to create beyond the immediate request. Think big picture.
We started by creating over one hundred icons that looked like they belonged together. Then we moved onto bigger illustrations to represent each section of their site.
So of course I created illustrations. What they didn’t expect was a super-high level of creative direction and idea generation. For me, it wasn’t just about handing over some pretty pictures. They needed expert advice on scale, color, and the best representational concepts to communicate with their audience. They needed a human who could translate their requests into the right image in the right place. I was their human.
Read heavy detail about this illustration project.
Chrissy Scivicque helps people eat their careers
I love Chrissy’s work. She’s wicked smart and crazily productive. When she showed me her two interactive guides, Time Management Magic and Life Less Frazzled, I knew I would love working with her. When I take on a project like illustrating ebook covers, I have to understand the material and the audience it’s created for. In this case, I was blown away with the level of content she had created. Chrissy also knows her audience very well. She knew that the people buying her guides had very high expectations and would need to see professionally-designed covers.
Even though Chrissy has some pretty great Photoshop skills, she just didn’t have the time to get the designs to the level she wanted.
We shared a few deep conversations and emails about her audience. Then I hung up the SparkyPhone and slid down the pole into the FirepantsCave, where banks of LCD monitors gleam and the smell of pencil graphite hangs in the air. I emerged with concept sketches and Chrissy squealed with delight.
Once the final art was done, we made a few tweaks and I disappeared into the night. Okay, not really. I actually stuck around to make sure she had all the files she needed to create web badges and sprinkle illustrated goodness throughout her guides. I even gave her 3D spiral-bound covers to use on her site.
It was a complete package solution for Chrissy: on-target illustration and Super Sparky Support. Her guides look as professional on the outside as the content inside.