Graphic design has become an essential part of modern society. Designers decorate our world and communicate through shape and image with those in it. It is nearly impossible to go a day without seeing the major impact design has on our lives.

What people don’t frequently see is what happens behind the scenes. The elusive Design Hero travels the earth doing his part to save the world from bad design.

This book was created for designers by a designer. It contains 32 pages with 12 ridiculous scenarios about the Design Hero’s life. Calvin Keyes stars as the Design Hero with Jesse Lindhorst as the supporting role of the Design Criminal. Click below to preview the first two thirds of the book.

Every image within the book is a composite of several images shot independently. For the majority of the photos the Design Hero was photographed in a studio in front of a green screen. He was then added into the environment in post production. Only for three of the shots did the Design Hero brave the cold Wisconsin fall weather in a thin spandex suit.

A range of equipment was utilized in the creation, mainly a Canon 50D digital SLR with a 28-75mm Tamron lens. Every photo utilizes flash in some way. On location battery powered strobes were used. Shooting in the studio allowed greater control of light than in the environment. Within the studio Elinchrom 400BX monolights were used, frequently with a beauty dish.

Simple adjustments to the images were made in Adobe Lightroom while Photoshop was used to create the composites. The final book was designed in Adobe InDesign.

I recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Stout with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Multimedia Design. In addition I completed a minor in Applied Photography.

I am currently working as a Designer at Morsekode in Minneapolis.

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