Pickshot is a toothpick shooting world championship event that takes place in Gary, Indiana every 4 years.
Founded by Gary Pickshot 268 years ago, this competition is a gathering of the greatest toothpick shooters the world has to offer.
The competition consists of three rounds lasting days each that pit the hundreds of competitors against each other in events of skill and precision, culminating in head-to-head duels for the final round.
The following is suite of event advertisements to create interest for the event
Creation of physical typography as an element was a hard requirement.
The project began with a creative naming exercise meant to assist in the creation of an event to plan and create advertisements for. However, we had no knowledge of the intent of the exercise beforehand, so after learning what the goal of the project was, all the work I did in the creative naming exercise was rendered useless. Pickshot is inspired by Youtube videos and TikToks of people shooting or flicking toothpicks with enough force to puncture material such as paper or corkboard
Thus, Pickshot, and the story behind it, was born.
The project truly began with a decision of aesthetic. Two I came up with were the "official" aesthetic and "underground" aesthetic. The "official" aesthetic took inspiration from the spectacle of large athletic events such as the Olympics or the Super Bowl. The "underground" aesthetic was inspired by smaller scale combat sports like UFC, or the idea of underground fight clubs and amateur boxing all with a vintage coating. Mood boards were created to reflect both.
Next, I explored the creation of elements and compositions for the main billboard/poster advertisement that would inform the design of other formats. This step and development of the typography happened in tandem.
The final composition for the large-format poster application, below, was selected for how dynamic and interactive the elements were, with the color palette complementing the intensity and spectacle behind the composition and idea of the event.
Additionally, elements found in the final composition and some carried over from the ideation process were refined in order to create the smaller-scale advertisements.
The appearance of the name of the event on our advertisements had to adhere to the physical typography requirement of the project. Initially I had the thought to use toothpicks for the title but the idea did not translate well into reality.
The second attempt at physical typography was latex paint on a martial arts belt using a stencil. However this was messy, and did not turn out well either.
With the third and final attempt, I discovered the wonders of heat transfer vinyl. Luckily, I had access to a Cricut which made this step relatively painless.
This result was eventually treated in photoshop to match the color palette I selected for the advertisements.
The type used for the HTV print as well as other information on the advertisements is Acumin Variable Concept at varying widths and stroke weights to establish hierarchy.
The final composition for the large-format poster application, below, was selected for how dynamic and interactive the elements were, with the color palette complementing the intensity and spectacle behind the composition and idea of the event.
In addition to a billboard/large scale poster format, various sizes of web advertisement applications were required.
