A new year is coming up soon and that means a 2010 calendar/poster for the Boston architectural firm Black Cow. This is my fourth year of designing, writing and illustrating one for the firm. Each year I create a complex and humorous piece loaded with lots of visuals and ridiculous facts. The poster has to stand the test of time (12 months) so the goal is to have a piece that demands multiple viewing and discoveries of little overlooked tidbits.
 This past year Black Cow merged with Nelson, a large architectural and engineering firm out of Philadelphia so there was an expanded dynamic to the piece. I imagined a skyscraper that would have lots of characters and rooms where various situations and jokes could occur. I came up with the corniest jokes I could about cows,architecture and the merging of two firms.

These posters always take me a few months to produce, size (12x36), sketching ideas, detail and the layout of elements all make for a long haul. For this years piece I worked out the basic building in Illustrator and from there worked up ideas for the various situations in my sketchbook, eventually translating them into separate layers in the AI document. From there I bring it into Photoshop and add some textures and further shading.