Top Design Contest

Best of Show

Gathering Interest

When Dave Lear of Odell Advertising, North Canton, Ohio, was given the assignment of designing a poster for The Hoover Company's WindTunnelTM vacuum, you could say he was handed the job of his dreams.

"They don't reign you in too much," said Lear, noting that he has worked on projects for Hoover for many years. "They're a pretty terrific company for giving you a chance to dream."

Lear, who has been a graphic designer for approximately 30 years, explained that the company required that he use the vacuum cleaner, text and foil imprint. The rest was up to him. "They told me ‘Here's the cleaner and we would like you to use foil. What do you have in mind?' " Lear noted that it took him about a day to design the poster.

Kevin Smith, owner of PPI Graphics, Canton, Ohio, which produced the poster, developed the concept of using a foil imprint to create a holographic image of the WindTunnel.

Smith contacted Irene Baker at Hoover, who in turn contracted with Odell to implement the idea in designing the poster.

"I had to use the wind tunnel graphic," explained Lear, "that was a given. And I knew they'd want to foil it, along with the logo. I also wanted a dark background, to make the foil pop."

Smith explained that he chose to enter the poster in the contest because of the amount of technology it incorporates.

"Aqueous coating, the foil-stamped hologram, four-color...it has everything," he said, "not to mention it is an attractive poster."

He noted that Hoover was adamant that the color of the cleaner on the poster match the actual product exactly. "[Dave] is an excellent PhotoShop electronic prepress designer—it was perfect on the first try. We didn't have to make any adjustments at all, we just put it on the press and printed it," Smith said.