Before / After
I have always been fascinated by the stark contrast between the old and the new. My graphic design skills have allowed me to employ that dynamic and create new "afters" out of existing befores.
Brochure-spec: Automotive restoration, while incredibly rewarding, is an often-painstaking and labor-intensive process that can take a fortune and years to complete. But with Photoshop, it can be done within days. On the left is a 2018 photo of my 1984 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, and on the right is my digital restoration of it. The intent was to photograph my car in the same way that all the car manufacturers of the period did for their promotional materials.
Film isn't dead... or is it? Sometimes, digitally restoring a photograph is the exact opposite of what you want to do. For this project, I took an impromptu photograph of a passing 1978 Mercury Cougar in a parking lot and digitally altered it to make it look like a 40-year-old polaroid. Lucky for me, the car itself entirely looked the part—right down to its original six-digit blue California license plate, original dealer license plate frame, and month/year stickers.
With regards to the latter, my in-depth knowledge of California license plates led me to know that since the month sticker (red-on-white, by the way, which is period-correct for that era) was from August, that would have meant that these plates—and this car—were first registered in August 1977. Since the DMV always issues year stickers expiring the following year, the first year sticker on this plate would have been a 1978 sticker... which happened to be aqua in color just like the 2017 sticker in my original photo! Because of the added blurring I used to recreate that '70s polaroid look, I didn't need to go in and manually add a 1978 sticker to the plate.
"WOW! What A Difference!" That was was the slogan of Blockbuster Video from around 1985 to 1993, and in the opinion of this graphic designer, it couldn't be truer here. The '80s were a wild time of excess, decadence, and iconic trends. One of these trends was the minitruckin' craze of the late '80s, which involved taking brand-new pickup trucks and stripping them of all practical uses.
The idea for this particular project began with my realization that the Blockbuster Video logo looked eerily similar to the blue California license plates issued between 1969 and 1986. I wanted to see what this newfound plate would have looked like on a vehicle, but I knew it couldn't just be on any vehicle. It had to be on something that would have existed on that same plane of existence in the '80s: fresh, exciting, and all the rage. So I found a photo from an old magazine, of an outrageously-modified 1987 Toyota Pickup posing with an equally-'80s-looking supermodel sporting Aqua Net hair. FFWD a few days, and I had this home video mascot on wheels sitting in front of me.
