Annual Report Illustrations

Sonoco is a global packaging manufacturer corporate headquartered in a small town outside of Columbia, SC. If you've ever eaten chips, bought ground coffee or mixed nuts, ridden in a car, bought gum, perfume in a gift package; (I could on and on,) your path has crossed that of a Sonoco product.

When I was approached by Carolyn D. Johnson from their Corporate Communications department, on referral from Brian Murrell at local agency, AdCo, I'm not sure I knew what to expect. The first job was to depict a car cross-sectioned to reveal the many products they manufacture from their Protective Solutions division, called Tegrant Corporation. Working with Lauren Myrent out of Chicago, the job went well, with only a few revisions, and they were happy with the final result. I do create vector, more technical illustrations on occasion, and I am known to be versatile, so, even though all of these products were new to me, I dove right in, and was ultimately happy with the final results. Lauren was also easy to work with and professional. Before that project was even completed, I was contacted by Carolyn again about another project. “Thirty plus illustrations of many products I am generally unfamiliar with....In two weeks time?.....for the annual report of a 5 billion dollar corporation?...GULP!,” I thought to myself. Not only that, I had to receive and shoot reference for all of them before I could even begin. Yikes! I was grateful for the business, no doubt. I had been suffering from a major case of the "Slows" for way too long, so, I was anxious to work on another, even bigger, project, with this newfound client. Once the initial look was settled on, after a bit of experimentation, I finally was able to dive into the nitty gritty. On a job this scale, three quarters of the time is spent on preparation and design, so, the actual illustration sits in the wings until everything is ironed out. Fortunately, everything went well. Carolyn was professional, detail oriented, organized, and a pleasure to work with. I just received the printed pieces today, and was happy to see all of the hard work In Print! Thats the ultimate satisfaction of print work, you get to hold a physical piece in your hands, whilst considering what it took to get to that point. (You can even smell, or taste, the “package” if you like! Yum!)