Design With Me | Matt Cosner Racing x LineX Autograph Card
Project // Autograph Card Design
The Design Process
The Matt Cosner and Line-X promotional card / autograph driver card is one of my favorite projects and designs that I’ve designed to date! I feel like I keep saying this with every project or design lately, but it’s absolutely true! I always find something within each one of the designs that really grabs ahold of me, and becomes a favorite! Not to mention, the amazing race teams and drivers’ families, I get to work with during the process! This one, is the pairing of the bright yellow, black, and white coloration that Matt carries across the board from his pit buggy, to car wrap, fire suit and beyond.
Matt Cosner Racing is a Super Dirt Late Model team that will be joining the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series tour for a majority of the 2021 season, after joining forces with Line-X as a primary sponsor for the 2021 season. After having a win already race on the books at Selinsgrove Speedway, in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania in the month of May, he is looking to have a very promising outlook for the 2021 season. You can learn more about Matt Cosner and Matt Cosner Racing, right here.
This card would be a true testament of professionalism through the design, while paired with incorporating their corporate sponsor, Line-X. I love designing this style of a “hero card” as this card drives awareness and promotes the team’s primary sponsor. This card focuses more on the information of what Line-X has to offer, vs. the team’s information - Which in my opinion, arguably makes for a more interesting card for fans to pick up! What better way to promote your title sponsor, then to give them 50% of the reader’s attention!
Items Matt Cosner definitely wanted to highlight on his autograph card were:
50% to Line-X brand
Information on the brand, Line-X
All of their 2021 Sponsors
Images of the Dirt Late Model on both sides of the card
A professional and clean looking card
MORE THAN JUST USING A LOGO // FOLLOWING BRAND GUIDELINES & BRAND STANDARDS
Branding is crucial when it comes to an effective and unique hero card, and if you look at the past hero cards that I have done, you will notice a trend, no matter what style of racing; sprint car, late model, dirt modified, etc., that specific autograph card is for. A promotional card is different in the aspect that it typically follows the primary sponsors branding, instead of the drivers branding in the overall consistency of the card. I was still able to use pieces from Matt’s car, but most of it, was heavily dependent on Line-X’s brand standards as a whole.
Line-X is a pretty well known brand, and along with that they carry a specific style guide for their brand, called “brand guidelines”. Brand guidelines or brand standards, is a complete layout of the brand and it’s identifiers, breaking down: specific color, logos, fonts, logo usage, logo size, mission statement, specific terms, etc. These are the key factors that hold your brand together. Usually a packet, given in .PDF format or vector art format is given to graphic designers so that they can easily stay within the style of the company.
I worked specifically with Line-X’s brand guidelines, to create the back of this card. It’s more important for the promotional cards, that we follow some type of style or brand guidelines, that is directed from what the corporate sponsor, in this case - Line-X, had already created. This ensures that we are staying consistent with their design techniques, as well as keeping their brand easily recognizable, by its already consumers or potential consumers or shareholders.
Paired with Line-X’s very own specific font (Gotham), imagery and Pantone Colors (Process Yellow , White, and Black), this card is right on brand for them, as a business and sponsor. Utilizing bits and pieces of information from Line-X’s website, and their style, this was the perfect touch, to really bring their branding to Matt’s card. After 1 round of small revisions, we finally hit the nail on the head, and created a unique and professional piece for Matt Cosner Racing and Line-X brand initial collaboration while still working within their constraints of their brand guidelines.
IMAGE CREDIT
I like to work with my own images, but sometimes when working with clients outside of my region or tracks that I can get to, they must supply high resolution images to work with. Matt and Matt’s wife, Beth, already had photographers they were working with to get images of their newly wrapped car. Beth and Matt supplied several high resolution images from WRT Speedwerx photographers.
In collaboration with these images and the images supplied by Line-X branding team, they really brought to life this card and added a bit pop of color to the card. We had to wait for several images to be supplied from the initial contact, but once they were obtained and supplied - we quickly got this card design moving in the right direction. Normally this process can take the longest, depending on how fast other photographers edit or how fast they can supply each file that is needed at a high resolution, when we’re looking at the two week turn around window. Luckily, we knew ahead of time, and were able to factor needing images from Matt’s first race with the Line-X sponsor on the car to create a better timeline for when we could get these finalized and completed.
HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES & VECTOR ART
For hero cards or any printed promotional you will be with 2 file types: high resolution images, and vector art. This is key to creating a high quality piece, for each client I work with.
A few definitions that we need to talk about first: vector and high resolution images.
High Resolution Images
A high resolution image is any raster image that is based on pixels, instead of line work. A raster image uses pixels, or square shapes with a specific color assigned to each square/pixel to create a larger image. Photoshop is a raster image based software. Any graphics you create in Adobe Photoshop, is using pixels and will not be able to be scaled to any size, without some type of pixilation occurring. (This is why graphic designers highly stress against using Adobe Photoshop to create logos.) High Resolution for printed work needs to be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch). This stands for the amount of pixels the human eye can see once printed - Anything over is overkill, and anything under will result in pixilation or fuzzy appearance, low resolution images. You can’t add pixels into an image, but you can always remove them, by resizing, and cropping. Working with the highest resolution images that you can get, is what keeps graphic designers the happiest and causes less stress for the client relationship as well. Any image that is uploaded to Facebook, social media, or websites is low resolution (72dpi), which is not good quality for printed material.
Vector Art
Vector art is based on linework, that is easily scalable to any size without pixilation or distortion. Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw are great software/applications to create vector based art. Vector art is great for t-shirts, billboards, or anything scalable later on down the road.
Just like your car graphics, I always request those to work directly from for a few reasons. For one, they are already created in vector art, by your car designer or wrap artist. For two, they are identical to what is on your car already, and will aid in creating a cohesive piece to your current branding. Also, there is quite a lot hidden in car graphic files, from fonts, to specific colors, to elements (like the paint splatter, that can take hours to recreate, if needed and could be an additional charge, depending on the time it would take to redraw those elements). It’s always easier to contact your wrap artist, and obtain that piece - Most times they should be able to give you a .pdf or Adobe Illustrator file to work from, as you paid for the wrap design.
CAR GRAPHICS
I was also able to get ahold of vector art, which really helps make this design scream, excellent, professional and exciting. This is arguably one of the most important pieces when working on a professional piece, such as this card - to really tie in every aspect of the brand, and parts, I always like to request the original car graphics, from whoever designed the car for the team. This ensures that every piece of the car, card, and full racing team hold the highest level of professionalism that will catch the attention of a fan walking through the pits.
About ucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series:
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series is the premier national touring sanctioning body for dirt late models. These Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt racecars are on the cutting edge of technology in construction and are powered by 800 horsepower V-8 engines based on the Chevy, Ford and Mopar power plants. Nothing is “stock” about these $70,000 machines that provide dirt slinging, sideways, door-to-door racing action lap after lap. The in your face excitement of a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event is second to none in motorsports!
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series provides race fans the most exciting and entertaining events. The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series averages 43 entries per event, the highest average of any touring series in the country. The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series also has over 500 different drivers competing at least once with the series.
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series will air multiple events LIVE this season on LucasOilRacing.TV and broadcast on five (5) different networks including: CBS, CBS Sports Network, NBC Sports Network, MAVTV Motorsports Network, and LucasOilRacing.TV. Network-televised events will feature multiple camera angles, driver interviews, on-board cameras, and various technical segments that bring the racing action to an even more intense and entertaining level for viewers.
The series also has expanded its presence among its social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to bring the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series brand to new untapped markets. Combining the extensive TV package, press releases, website, and the social media outlets, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series brings enormous brand recognition, publicity, and exposure to the companies that partner with the series!
As the owner of the series, Lucas Oil Products has put in place the necessary infrastructure with an experienced professional staff to provide sponsors, racers, race fans and promoters an exciting brand of entertainment while bringing much needed stability to the dirt late model industry. The same formula of success that Lucas Oil Products is founded on is being passed on to the race series to ensure tremendous results for everyone involved.
Learn more about Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, right here.
About Line-X:
LINE-X® is a global leader in protective coatings development and availability. We are the only franchised network in North America specializing in the automotive aftermarket and wide-ranging protective coatings services.
LINE-X is widely known as the market leader in spray-on truck bedliners, and with over 25 years of industry experience and technical expertise, our applicators are the best in the business. Our passion for protection and innovation has expanded LINE-X applications beyond bedliners into other areas of the automotive aftermarket — like specialty automotive coatings and accessories — as well as the commercial, industrial, and manufacturing realms. LINE-X products and people are up for almost any challenge.
We are dedicated to providing our customers with products and solutions that exceed expectations. We promise premium performance, superior quality, exceptional value, and excellence in every dimension of your LINE-X experience.
Learn more about Line-x at Linex.com
About Nicole Signor:
Nicole Signor is a graphic designer, photographer and social media content creator/manager in the Motorsports industry. Working for several different drivers, teams, series, and businesses, Nicole is no stranger to providing high-quality work and professional content for the open-wheel racing industry, from raceday schedule graphics, professional imagery or video, to social media content and management.
Contact: Nicole Signor
Nicole Signor Creative
nsignorcreative@gmail.com
nicolesignor.com
