Max & ServiceMan – The Cover

Back in 2014, I was contacted by ServiceMax, a company in the San Francisco bay area, to create some art for a unique advertising project. ServiceMax is a tech company, and they wanted to showcase an iPad app they created that can help mobile servicemen with other companies to do their jobs better. The idea was to have a sales brochure disguised as a children’s book that ServiceMax intended to distribute at a convention for their industry.

Time was of the essence with this project. I had two weeks to go from pencil concepts to final art, and this all was while I was gainfully employed from 9-6 at an animation studio! Yikes! Under the guidance of art director Percy Chow, I proceeded to tackle the art with the idea of doing it in a throwback style similar to mid-century illustrators H.A. Rey and Syd Hoff. You know – that simplified drawing style and limited color palette thing that looks easy, but really takes a lot of work!

 

Max & ServiceMan
Max & ServiceMan

 

The challenge was fun. With those limitations for that art style, it forces you to be creative in a way you don’t normally think of when left to your own unlimited devices. So I tackled the art with simplicity, but thinking of flow and design since I could only use black, the white of the paper, and the colors from ServiceMax’s logo (light blue, dark blue, & orange).

Since the only way you would ever have been able to see this art before was to have been handed one of the books at that tech convention back in 2014, this remains the rarest book I have ever done! With ServiceMax’s permission, I am happy to share the art with you here on the ol’ blog.

For the next 10 business days (we’ll take the weekends off), I will be posting one page each day for your perusal. The story is about Max, the iPad with ServiceMax’s software on it, and how he helps out ServiceMan with his job of driving around repairing various mechanical devices.

Today, I present to you the front cover:

 

This is a little something I like to call the "cover."
This is a little something I like to call the “cover.”