While at Walz Tetrick Advertising, I art directed and designed the Fan Express Bus vinyl wrap for the Kansas City Royals Major League Baseball team. The Royals Fan Express is a bus + program that gives fans in the Midwest region the opportunity to win a trip to Kansas City to see a Royals game in person. Each Royals Fan Express Pass includes travel to and from KC on the Royals Fan Express bus, a ticket to that day’s game, and a game program. Two weeks prior to each Royals Fan Express trip tune into our respective radio partner to learn more about contest details. The bus travels as far south as Springfield, MO, or Wichita, KS, and as far north as Omaha, NE to pick up Royals fans and bring them to the game.
SERVICES
Graphic Design
Out-of-Home Advertising
Packaging
Photo Manipulation & Retouching
Previous Fan Express Bus Wrap
This was Walz Tetrick Advertising’s solution for the previous year – it had a blur effect to make the players more dynamic, and a subtle tone-on-tone background calling out the different cities that it travels to for fans, as well as the “Always Royal” tagline. I thought it was very nice, clean execution, but I wanted this year’s to have a bit more dynamic movement and a larger-than-life ‘heroic’ quality to the players.
One thing I noted about the previous execution was that the whites of the players didn’t match on either side – one had a pinkish cast to it. I made a note to match the white balance across the images I selected to avoid this (albeit, small) visual inconsistency.
Most Popular Players
The Royals provided us with some excellent photography from previous games, and I proceeded to find ideal shots of each of the most popular players on the team – Alex Gordon, Jorge Soler, Salvy Perez, Whit Merrifield, Adalberto Modesi, and Brad Keller. The next step was to cut each of those players out of the background in the photos I selected and prepare them for dynamic effects.
ExplorATION
While I knew I wanted to add visual effects to express the dynamic nature of these great shots of the athletes, I didn’t know what particular look would be best, and started to explore with some different effects. We had used neon lights in other recent advertising for the Royals, so I centered my experimentation with dynamic effects that used light and dust.
The ‘exploding dust’ effect seemed to be the most fitting, easy to tie to the dust in the baseball diamond. Once I landed on the effect, I began to apply it to each player image, being mindful about directions, angles, and adding the effect in a way to emphasize each player’s activity.
Other Elements
In addition to the players, I needed to include some other elements in the wrap – including the year’s tagline, “Always Royal”, abstract marks that represent the stitches in a baseball, “Fan Express,” so the fans would recognize the bus, Fox Sports KC logo, and a background of Royals blue.
Alternate Options
In order to give the larger-than-life effect to the players, I was able to fit 2 players per side, featuring a total of 4 players on the Fan Express Bus. I created multiple layouts this way, using different combinations of players, and let the Royals choose which combination of 4 players they wanted to feature.
Final DESIGN
The Royals were happy with the execution and chose this option, featuring Jorge Soler, Salvy Perez, Adalberto Modesi, and Alex Gordon. The new font for “Fan Express” was chosen by the Royals, and had been used in multiple tactics (billboards, commercials, social media channels) that year.
Graphic Design & Advertising 