'Catdome Poster Project. Oh heck yes!

The Inspiration

This has been a big few weeks for our little site/blog.  Last week, Linfield Football released the final wave of recruits and the mammoth 2013 recruit video that features wall-to-wall incoming new Linfield ballers. This past Tuesday, we released the 2013 Spring Ball video "The Difference" and that's been a smash hit.  We're blessed that D3football.com and Footballscoop.com both found the video to be worthy enough to give them some major run on each of their sites.  Very cool.

Today we unleash our final big project of the Spring....'Catdome Posters!  After the season ended I was thinking about what to do for the Recruit Video and Spring Ball video but then I started to ask myself if there is something else we could do to step up our game.  Ideas were rolling around in my head (scary) and then I started to think about my room growing up (I hit my teens in the late '80s).  My rooms was covered in photos I cut out from Sports Illustrated and sports posters.  That's when the idea hit me...let's use some iconic sports posters from the 80's and 90's as the inspiration to create a set of Linfield Football posters.

I sat on the idea for a few weeks and thought about my favorites posters growing up that I've seen and how we could incorporate them with the 'Cats.  I had an idea but I have ZERO technical expertise in staged photography, and as you can tell from the photo above, my Photoshop skills are terrible.  If this project was going to happen, it was going to take a team of people to go for it.

The first person that popped into my head is Linfield Professor Brad Thompson, who is the Department Chair for the Mass Communications department.  Wildcat fans also know Brad for the incredible sports action photos of Linfield athletes in action.  Brad is a gifted sports photographer and has been a major supporter of the athletic department and of Catdomealumni.com.  I reached out to Brad and pitched the idea with no feel of how he would respond.  Brad's response was an immediate "Let's do this!".

Brad asked if we could bring in a student photographer to do the actual shoot.  Brad's request wound up being a major win for this project as he brought in Linfield Senior Joel Ray into the fold.  Joel has a BRIGHT future in front of him as a photographer.  Joel is a super talent and was a perfect fit for this project.  The next step was to find a graphic artist and that was a no-brainer.  I reached out to former Linfield Defensive Lineman and top flight graphic designer Chris Miles of CMDesign.  You guys already know Chris' work from the previous wall paper projects and other works he's provided.  I can't say enough about Chris and his skill level.  Chris was also fired up to take on this project.

The next step was reaching out to a group of 'Cats that came to mind for these posters and that wasn't a hard sell.  The guys were enthusiastic to take part.  We organized a photo shoot in early March where Brad and Joel brought in their own equipment for the shoot.  The players did a great job in being outstanding subjects and Joel nailed it.

After the shoot was done we turned over the photos to Chris and just had to wait for him to work his magic.  The results that came back are incredible.  At 1 P.M. today we'll reveal the first poster from the set.   From there, we'll post up the 2nd poster right before 5pm.  On Friday, we'll roll out the final two posters.

This has been an incredible project to work on.  99.9% of the credit of this projects goes to Brad, Joel, and Chris.  They are the ones that brought an idea to life and made it happen.  These three did this at NO COST.  In fact, they reached in their own pocket to realize this project.  This came out of the love they have for their craft and willingness to give something unique to Linfield College Football.  I can't fully express how grateful I am to them for making this happen.

Come Back at 1 P.M. today as we kick it off with our take on "The Judge".

Brad Thompson Sports Photography
Joel Ray Photography
CMDesign (Chris Miles)