A Local Company . . . McKenzie Wagner Inc.

While reviewing my process for my Illustration class this week, I discussed screen printing. I enjoyed the experience, but now know that it's not something I could do very often. This made me wonder whether or not any local companies design for screen printing any more. So... I started looking online & came across McKenzie Wagner's Illustration department. Above is a picture of a 5 poster series that they did that were screen printed. These were "developed for the Greater Community AIDs Project of East Central Illinois. Inspired by WWII propaganda posters..." This explains they "dated" look that these posters have, but, I really like that look for these. I think that screen printing was the right way to go in printing this style of poster, anything crisp & clean wouldn't have gotten the same message across.

Then I came across their cover for the 2013 Springfield Visitors Guide - SCVB. It is an extremely strong illustration that definitely gets the "Illinois" point across. Multiple images of Abe Lincoln with key "Springfield" points of interest catch the eye.

They also did the branding for SCVB's Celebrity Citizen campaign. The final designs for this are at left. Again, a VERY strong Abe Lincoln, tall hat and all! Very clean design with subtle hints of color, but overall pleasing to the eye.

 

The 10 images above are all part of the Springfield Grooves" theme that McKenzie Wagner created for the booth and pre-conference promotion to attendees of the
Illinois Society of Association Executives (ISAE) Annual Meeting. "Shag carpeting, lava lamps, incense, bean bag chairs, racks of records and rocking 70s tunes to get meeting attendees’ feet tapping set the flavor of the booth. MW designed a series of ten 70s-inspired album cover parody posters that swapped Abe Lincoln’s face or a Springfield scene for the original images on the covers. The posters were popular give-aways at the booth." The really funny thing is that I actually have some of the original albums that they are imitating.

Feel free to check the rest of their work out at McKenzie Wagner.