Andy Rawls is a custom furniture builder whose been in the game for the better part of 20 years. He lives in Boerne, Texas, and has an unbelievable work ethic and affinity for woodcraft. His YouTube channel only took 3 years to grow to nearly half a million followers, with some videos racking up millions of views.
Andy came to us looking for some new merchandise illustrations. He wanted the merch to target the part of his audience that followed his Oliver Band Saw restoration video series. This saw had a unique history and an early American industrial aesthetic that we used alongside Andy's current brand to inform the design direction.
The first order of business was finding relevant imagery relating to the band saw and the Oliver Brand. We were able to dig up a few logos and badges from different stops on the Oliver Brand timeline. There were also numerous manuals and brochures to find images of the saw in its entirety.
An illustration direction was found using the old Oliver Machinery logo, material influences like wood and circular saw blades, and an overall vintage Americana theme. This illustration not only references the maker of the band saw, but it also straddles the line with Andy's brand and aesthetic.
For his second graphic, Andy wanted something that directly referenced his No. 35 Oliver band saw. The saw was a beautiful piece of machinery and had a very interesting form. The saw was rendered in a mono-line style to mimic graphics found in its user manual and created in black and white to further tie it to the vintage aesthetic. Lastly, to give the badge graphic its shape, a unique phrase from the manual was used to encapsulate the saw and bring it all together.
