By the time TourTech approached me for this job, I was already pretty far removed from activities at Anatomy Magazine and Trickle Media. My time at Trickle would end in December of 2013, and for about 4 years I would design mostly for select friends/musicians I really believed in. A former colleague of mine at Trickle would go on direct me to the marketing manager for TourTech, as they were dating, and through what was initially a friendship, I would negotiate a job with them several years later.

TourTech is a Raleigh-based systems as a service firm specialized in large scale sports events and festivals. As a company, TourTech sells services related to cardless payments systems, WiFi routing, point of sale networking systems, and cell phone signal boosters for major events that would normally encumber local telecommunications infrastructure.

I was approached by their marketing manager with the objective of putting together a whitepaper document intended for distribution via email and digital channels. Because of its intended purpose for web, unlike other pieces that are traditionally released in a spread format, this document is built specifically with a single-page layout in mind.

As far as color considerations, they were already decided. With TourTech's core brand colors represented with crimson, white and gray, the chosen direction in terms of color was largely dictated by the pre-existing brand identity. 

Unlike prior projects, all images, infographics and copy were provided by the client. This made the project an experience that was straightforward to manage, and most importantly, easy to bring to delivery. With this being said, however, while one can live by this sword, they can die by it too. While I, as the designer, was fine with supplied copy and photos, being conscripted to use the client-provided infographic almost certainly limited the end-to-end polish of the product from an aesthetic standpoint.

With that being said, I think some of the relative victories are clear. Compared to Anatomy VI and Anatomy VII, the execution of this project certainly feels more polished. Pagination is clean and streamlined, information looks punchy and engaging with "3-D" text boxes, word spacing is more consistent, and line spacing has more room to breathe. Finally, when looking at the highlighted titles, it is clear that this aesthetic is something that I carried over from Anatomy Magazine.

But just as much as this piece of work is inspired by the work I did starting out on Anatomy, it is also just as much inspired by the magazines that informed the vision of the publication I used to call my baby. Something that every designer realizes, is that certain industries have a "look" to them. Knowing the look of the industry almost certainly makes you better at doing work in said sector. Like medicine, law, marketing, finance and fast food, music-related media has a "look" to it. Because of my varied exposure to music and fashion, which are certainly auxiliary industries, I have grown pretty comfortable in bringing this aesthetic to a head.

Part of what I found to be interesting about applying this look, however, was that it was not for something that people directly correlate with the music business. My client wasn't music label, artist or publication. TourTech is unabashedly an IT business. But the intelligence of approaching a music designer for an IT business' marketing collateral, is that if prospective clients are music businesses, then they need to appeal to them, regardless of how nerdy, technical or un-glamorous the work is that they do. Ultimately, while TourTech was a job that fell into my repertoire, I think the case study is found not in the work that I have done, so much as it is the way that they approach their business and understand their brand: Smart people like to deal with smart people. Attractive people like to deal with attractive people. Cool people like to deal with cool people. If what you do is something inherently uncool that a cool person might want, then you'd better look cool too to get their attention. Ultimately, the case study is in one of good branding: good branding isn't about how you see yourself--it's about how the people you are trying to sell to, see you.

While this information and perspective would have most certainly been an asset to me at the onset of my career, I think that is why they call it "perspective." Ultimately, you have to live, experience, have victories and make mistakes before obtaining any legitimate barometer for how to pull on the things that you have learned in your career, and in the right ways. There is little about this craft that is not nuanced, thus, in many ways being a designer at a fundamental level, is being a student of nuance. Understanding nuance, I've realized, takes time. The only way to endure time, is to be patient. Lucky for me: patience was always my super power.